Vendors along West Broadway Avenue are being asked to sign up now for one of North Minneapolis's biggest annual street parties, as organizers open registration for the 2026 Open Streets West Broadway festival set for Saturday, September 12. The car-free celebration will run from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and stretch across a 10-block section of Broadway, giving local entrepreneurs, food vendors, and artists a chance to showcase their work to thousands of visitors from across Minnesota.
Community organizers are asking vendors to apply for the event, according to the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder. The festival offers 13 vendor options, including free options, and interested sellers can visit the Open Streets West Broadway vendor registration form to apply. Open Streets Executive Director Kristel Porter said many vendors were sold out by 3 p.m. at last year's event, a sign of just how much foot traffic the car-free corridor can generate for small businesses.
A Bigger Piece of the City's Fall Lineup
This year's West Broadway event isn't happening in isolation. The City of Minneapolis selected the West Broadway Business & Area Coalition in June to host the event, backing it with $40,000 in direct expense funding plus roughly $65,000 in in-kind city services like traffic control and waste management, according to the City of Minneapolis. Open Streets West Broadway kicks off a trio of official city-sponsored Open Streets events this fall, with Open Streets Nicollet Avenue following on September 26 and Open Streets Hennepin Avenue closing out the season on October 11, per Bring Me The News.
Vehicle traffic will be closed for 13 blocks between Lyndale Avenue and Logan Avenue during the festival, with cross-traffic maintained only at Emerson, Fremont, and Knox Avenues, according to Open Streets West Broadway. Last year, the city co-hosted four Open Streets events across its commercial corridors that drew an estimated combined 120,000 attendees, per the city's own figures, underscoring how popular the car-free format has become across Minneapolis neighborhoods.
How the Program Landed in Local Hands
The current structure, where neighborhood and business coalitions like West Broadway's apply directly for city funding, traces back to 2023, when Minneapolis ended its 12-year organizing contract with founding nonprofit Our Streets Minneapolis following budget disagreements. That shift, reported by Bring Me The News, decentralized the program and put execution in the hands of local groups. Our Streets has continued operating outside that official city lineup, hosting an independent, privately funded Open Streets Lyndale event on June 7 this year.
For the West Broadway Business & Area Coalition, the September festival fits into a broader strategy of using large public events to support neighborhood wealth. The coalition retired its longtime FLOW Northside Arts Crawl in April 2023 after 17 years, redirecting resources toward economic development, small-business support, and anti-displacement work tied to planned light rail expansion, according to Racket. Under Porter's leadership, the group also launched the inaugural Northside Jazz and Heritage Festival along the Minneapolis riverfront in July, as reported by MPR News.
Redevelopment Along a Designated Cultural District
West Broadway Avenue carries extra weight in city planning circles. Minneapolis designated the corridor as one of seven official Cultural Districts in 2020, a policy meant to advance racial equity, preserve cultural identity, and spur commercial investment along historic corridors. That designation has coincided with visible change on the ground: a long-vacant Burger King building at 818 West Broadway Avenue, empty since 2018, was demolished in July under pressure from the city's 2024 vacant property ordinance, clearing space for new commercial use, according to North News.
Open Streets West Broadway remains one of North Minneapolis's largest annual celebrations, and organizers are betting that this year's turnout will again translate into strong sales for the vendors who sign up. With registration now open, the coalition is encouraging local businesses, artists, and community groups to participate before the September 12 date arrives.
