Tiny combat robots will duke it out on the Sierra College campus this Saturday as Maker Faire Rocklin takes place alongside a celebration of the college's 90th anniversary and a free preview day for prospective students. The gathering gets underway October 3 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., bringing makers, artists, scientists, engineers, crafters and creators together on the Rocklin campus for a day of hands-on workshops, creative projects, and robot battles.
The robot fights are the marquee draw this year. According to the City of Rocklin, the event will feature robot battles. The combat portion of the day is built around Bot'Geddon, a BattleBots-style tournament that pits 150-gram fleaweight, 1-pound antweight, and plastic antweight robots against each other in a double-elimination bracket, according to Robot Combat Events. It's the kind of small-scale, high-drama robotics showcase that gives amateur and student builders a real venue to test combat designs against each other rather than just in the workshop.
A Festival Built From a Community Partnership
Maker Faire Rocklin isn't a one-off pop-up — it first launched back in 2015 on the Sierra College campus and has run as a joint effort between the City of Rocklin, Sierra College, and the Rocklin Unified School District, operating under license from Make: Community, LLC, per the event's own site. That local-government-meets-school-district structure has helped the fair grow well past its original scale: past iterations have drawn more than 8,000 attendees and exhibits from over 120 regional makers spanning science, technology, crafting, and engineering, according to the event's call for makers page.
The Maker Faire concept traces back to 2006, when Make: magazine founder Dale Dougherty launched the first event in San Mateo. Rocklin's version is tailored to the priorities of its own school district and college.
Free Entry, Open Parking, and a New Preview Day
Getting in the door is easy on multiple fronts. General admission to Maker Faire Rocklin is free, with open campus parking across Sierra College's grounds; event check-in is set up at the Q Building, accessible parking is designated in Lot B, and Lot A1 is reserved for exhibit spaces, per event logistics details. For makers themselves, showing off a non-commercial interactive project costs nothing, while commercial exhibitors — startups and companies — pay booth fees of up to $200.
New this year is Sierra College Preview Day, also running October 3 and also free, aimed at giving prospective students a look at the campus during the same weekend as the maker festivities.
Ninety Years From a Junior College to a Growing Campus
The preview day and the maker fair both land during Sierra College's 90th anniversary.
Sierra College's campus provides a fitting setting for a festival built around hands-on robotics.
A Booming City Behind the Numbers
The City of Rocklin has grown by 65% since 2000, with a population of 73,500 in the U.S. Census 2023 ACS 1-Year Estimates, according to the Greater Sacramento Economic Council.
Full event details, including maker listings and exhibitor information, are posted on the fair's official site at rocklin.makerfaire.com. Admission remains free for the general public, with both the maker fair and the new Sierra College Preview Day running the same hours on the same Saturday.
