I work Highland Lakes real estate through Uncommon Highland Lakes Realty, and out here the event calendar runs on small towns and water instead of downtown venues. Most of my Highland Lakes clients are retiring, buying a second home, or moving to the lake full time, and one of the best ways to actually settle into a small town is to show up to what it already gathers around — a rodeo, a festival, a fireworks show over the lake. Knowing the calendar is also a genuinely useful signal for whether a town’s pace fits — some of these towns come alive for a festival weekend and go quiet the rest of the year, and others build their whole identity around one.
Spring
Burnet hosts the annual Bluebonnet Festival every spring, with live music, local art, and a parade built around the wildflower bloom. Horseshoe Bay hosts Balloons Over Horseshoe Bay, a hot air balloon festival over Easter weekend. Marble Falls follows with MayFest, a multi-day festival with food, rides, and music in the town’s downtown core. Burnet also holds its county rodeo in May at the Burnet County Fairgrounds, a tradition that traces back to 1903.
Summer
June brings LakeFest to Marble Falls — drag boat races on Lake Marble Falls that pull some of the fastest boats in the country. The region’s biggest weekend is the Fourth of July: Kingsland’s AquaBoom is a 50-plus-year-old, multi-day Independence Day celebration with three parades, a classic car show, a poker run, live music, and a fireworks finale over the Llano River. The same weekend, Marble Falls launches its own barge-based fireworks show over Lake Marble Falls, with smaller community shows at Inks Lake, Bertram, and Spicewood. Over at Horseshoe Bay, the resort hosts Balloons Over Horseshoe Bay and its own Fourth of July fireworks display for guests.
More Summer Events
- Beer by the Bay — two nights of touring country artists at Horseshoe Bay Resort each August.
- Harvest Wine Trail — grape stomps and harvest dinners at Hill Country wineries from late July through September.
Fall
Downtown Marble Falls hosts Oktoberfest at Harmony Park each fall — a free, family-friendly event with local craft beer, live music, and games that benefits the Boys & Girls Club of the Highland Lakes.
More Fall Events
- Burnet’s own Oktoberfest and Plein Air Festival — a separate courthouse-square tradition paired with an outdoor art competition.
- The Bertram Oatmeal Festival — nearly 50 years running, with a 5K, two parades, and a street dance.
- Burnet BBQ Cook-off & Music Fest — sanctioned competition barbecue and live music.
- Fort Croghan Day — living-history reenactors at Burnet’s 1849 frontier fort.
- The Main Street Car Show — a Kiwanis-run classic car show on Marble Falls’ Main Street.
- Market Day on Main & the Starving Artist Show — 100-plus artisan vendors on Main Street, held several times a year.
- Taste Highland Lakes — a Kingsland food and wine festival benefiting local youth programs.
- The Kingsland House of Arts & Crafts Fall Show — a small, member-run local art and craft show.
- Texas Wine Month — a self-guided passport with tastings across 60-plus Hill Country wineries, including several right in the Highland Lakes.
- Llano Heritage Days — a chuck wagon cook-off on the Llano River paired with a Western art exhibition.
- Llano’s fall festivals — the Texas Music Fest, River Pumpkin Float, Oktoberfest, and Wild Game Dinner.
- Llano Hunters Appreciation Day — the Deer Capital of Texas kicks off hunting season.
- Halloween on Vaughan Street — Bertram closes its main street for trick-or-treating and a costume contest.
- Wine, Dine & Jazz — a celebrity chef dinner and jazz weekend at Horseshoe Bay Resort each November.
Winter
Marble Falls’ Walkway of Lights is the region’s signature winter event — more than two million lights strung along the shore of Lake Marble Falls, running through the holiday season.
More Winter Events
- Starry Starry Nights — a nightly lighted walk along the Llano River at Badu Park, Thanksgiving through New Year’s.
- Burnet’s Lighting of the Square — the courthouse square lights up on Small Business Saturday.
- Merry & Pink — a festive downtown Marble Falls shopping night, part of the town’s full Christmas season.
What This Means If You’re Buying, Selling, or Retiring on the Lakes
If you’re touring a waterfront listing on Lake LBJ around LakeFest or AquaBoom weekend, expect real boat and marina traffic — it’s worth seeing a property on a normal weekend too, not just during the festival, so you know what day-to-day actually looks like. For second-home owners, these same weekends are when a short-term rental in Granite Shoals, Meadowlakes, or anywhere near Kingsland or Marble Falls sees its biggest demand spikes of the year. Getting to a few of these events yourself, before you buy, is also one of the fastest ways to meet the neighbors and get a feel for whether a town’s community is one you’d actually want to join. And if you’re weighing retirement here, the calendar itself is a data point: this is a region where a handful of town festivals define the social year, which is a very different rhythm than Austin’s near-constant event schedule — some people want exactly that, and some don’t. For the full town-by-town breakdown of the region, see my Highland Lakes Neighborhood Guides.
Browse All Highland Lakes Event Guides
This list updates automatically as I publish new Highland Lakes event guides.
Christmas in Marble Falls 2026: The Glory Tree and Small-Town Holiday Magic
With a new Glory Tree planned for Christmas in Marble Falls 2026, I have another reason to look forward to the holidays in a town I love. I’ve spent Christmas in the Texas Hill Country for decades, and there’s something about the holidays in a small town that never loses its magic. I think about […]
Your Guide to AquaBoom in Kingsland
If there’s one weekend that explains why people fall in love with Kingsland, it’s AquaBoom. I’ve had clients decide to buy after experiencing it firsthand, and I’ve had others realize a quieter lake town suits them better once they’ve seen what a full-on Fourth of July on Lake LBJ actually looks like. Here’s the real […]
Your Guide to Beer by the Bay at Horseshoe Bay Resort
Horseshoe Bay Resort now runs a genuine festival every few months — balloons in spring, this one in summer, wine and jazz in fall. Beer by the Bay is the resort’s answer to a proper outdoor country music festival, and it’s grown into one of the bigger draws on the Highland Lakes calendar. Beer by […]
Your Guide to Burnet’s Oktoberfest and Plein Air Festival
Burnet actually has two separate Oktoberfests within a short drive of each other every fall — one in Marble Falls at Harmony Park, and this one, on Burnet’s own courthouse square, paired with an art festival most visitors don’t expect. Here’s what makes Burnet’s version worth knowing about on its own terms. Burnet’s Oktoberfest leans […]
Your Guide to Fall Festivals in Llano County
Llano isn’t a town I work as often as Burnet, Marble Falls, or Kingsland, but it sits right along the Llano River just west of the Highland Lakes, and its fall calendar is genuinely worth knowing about if you’re looking anywhere on that side of the region. Here are the four traditions that make up […]
Your Guide to Fort Croghan Day
Most of Burnet’s festivals are about what the town is now — Fort Croghan Day is about what it was before it was a town at all. It’s one of the few events on the Highland Lakes calendar built around real, on-site history rather than a modern tradition, and it’s worth understanding on its own […]
Your Guide to Halloween on Vaughan Street in Bertram
Bertram doesn’t show up in the Highland Lakes conversation as often as Burnet or Marble Falls, but it’s the town that hosted the original 1903 Burnet County Fair, and it still runs one of the region’s most genuinely community-built Halloween traditions. Here’s what Halloween on Vaughan Street actually is. TLDR (Too Long; Didn’t Read): Your […]
Your Guide to Llano Heritage Days
Llano’s fall calendar keeps going after the Music Fest, the Pumpkin Float, and Hunters Appreciation Day wrap up. Heritage Days is where the town leans hardest into its actual Western history, and it pairs two genuinely distinct events under one weekend. Llano Heritage Days is hosted by the Llano Historical Society and the Llano County […]
Your Guide to Llano Hunters Appreciation Day
Llano calls itself the Deer Capital of Texas, and Hunters Appreciation Day is the one event that proves the town actually means it. If you’re weighing property anywhere near Llano, this is worth understanding before you assume November is a quiet month there. TLDR (Too Long; Didn’t Read): Your Guide to Llano Hunters Appreciation Day […]
Your Guide to Main Street Market Day & the Starving Artist Show in Marble Falls
Marble Falls’ Main Street already carries a car show, an Oktoberfest, and most of the town’s Christmas season. Market Day and the Starving Artist Show add a recurring, lower-key layer underneath all of that — the kind of event that happens often enough to become part of the town’s normal rhythm rather than a once-a-year […]
Your Guide to MayFest in Marble Falls
Marble Falls is the town most of the Highland Lakes orbits around, and MayFest is a good reminder that it’s still a real town center, not just a shopping strip between lake towns. Here’s what it is, what happens, and what it means if you end up living close enough to walk to it. Mayfest […]
Your Guide to Oktoberfest in Marble Falls
Marble Falls’ fall calendar used to have a gap between LakeFest in early summer and the Walkway of Lights in December, and Oktoberfest is what’s filled it in. It’s one of the newer additions to the town’s event lineup, but it’s already become a genuine local favorite. Here’s what it is and what it’s like […]
Your Guide to Taste Highland Lakes
Kingsland’s calendar has AquaBoom for the Fourth of July and a quiet local arts scene the rest of the year, but Taste Highland Lakes is the newer addition that’s given the town a genuine food-and-wine event of its own, separate from the lake entirely. Taste Highland Lakes is put together by the Kingsland/Lake LBJ Chamber […]
Your Guide to Texas Wine Month in the Hill Country
People move to the Hill Country for the lakes first and figure out the wine country second. October is when that second part becomes impossible to ignore, and the Highland Lakes has more of it, closer to home, than most people realize. TLDR (Too Long; Didn’t Read): Your Guide to Texas Wine Month in the […]
Your Guide to the Bertram Oatmeal Festival
Bertram already has the closed-street charm of Halloween on Vaughan Street going for it, but the Oatmeal Festival is the event that actually put the town on people’s radar statewide. It started as a protest, and it’s still going strong nearly 50 years later. The Oatmeal Festival exists because of an insult. In 1978, residents […]
Your Guide to the Burnet BBQ Cook-off & Music Fest
Burnet’s food-and-music calendar isn’t limited to Oktoberfest. The Burnet BBQ Cook-off & Music Fest is its own separate weekend, built for serious competition barbecue rather than a beer garden and an art walk. Here’s what sets it apart. The Burnet BBQ Cook-off & Music Fest is built around IBCA-sanctioned competition barbecue, which means it follows […]
Your Guide to the Kingsland House of Arts & Crafts Fall Show
AquaBoom gets all the attention when people talk about Kingsland, but the town has a quieter cultural side too, and the Kingsland House of Arts and Crafts is where it lives. Its fall show is a small, honest example of what a lake town looks like when it isn’t the Fourth of July. TLDR (Too […]
Your Guide to the Main Street Car Show in Marble Falls
Marble Falls’ fall calendar is genuinely crowded — Oktoberfest, LakeFest’s tail end, and this one, the Main Street Car Show, all land within a few weeks of each other. Here’s what the car show is, and why it’s stuck around for more than two decades. The Main Street Car Show has been a Marble Falls […]
Your Guide to the Texas Hill Country Harvest Wine Trail
October’s Texas Wine Month Passport gets most of the attention, but the actual grape harvest happens earlier, and the Highland Lakes’ own wineries throw open their doors for it. The Harvest Wine Trail is the late-summer prelude to Wine Month, built around the one time of year you can genuinely watch and take part in […]
Your Guide to Wine, Dine & Jazz at Horseshoe Bay Resort
Horseshoe Bay Resort’s golf tournaments get most of the attention, but Wine, Dine & Jazz is the event that actually shows off what the resort does with food and hospitality when it isn’t thinking about a scorecard. It’s been running for more than two decades, and it’s worth understanding on its own terms. TLDR (Too […]
Looking for the metro instead? Browse the Austin Metro Event Guides, or head back to the full Event Guides hub.
