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. 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’s been running for decades.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Looking for the metro instead? Browse the Austin Metro Event Guides, or head back to the full Event Guides hub.
