Tickets are now on sale for The Huntington's Mid-Autumn Moon Celebration, a three-night lantern festival set to fill the estate's classical Chinese garden with music, dance and mooncakes later this month. The evening event, which regularly sells out, runs after the San Marino gardens' normal daytime hours close to the public.
According to NBC Los Angeles, the celebration is held at The Huntington's Chinese garden and will feature lanterns lighting bridges and pathways, traditional Chinese music, and dance performances. Food offerings, along with jewelry and art for sale, will also be part of the festivities, and both the Freshwater Pavilion and the Terrace of Shared Delights will be open, along with the Jade Court Cafe. General admission runs $40, with members paying $35, youth ages 4 to 11 admitted for $10, and children under 4 getting in free, the outlet reports.
The 2026 celebration is scheduled across three consecutive nights, Friday, September 25 through Sunday, September 27, running from 6:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. each evening, according to The Huntington. Corporate and philanthropic support for this year's event comes from US Bank, the DCA Chen Private Foundation, Margaret F. Leong and Michael P. Checca, and Lenore Wong, per the same source.
Why the Tickets Move So Fast
Past editions of the celebration have drawn more than 4,000 visitors to the San Marino campus over the course of the multi-night event, according to Secret Los Angeles. That kind of demand, paired with limited evening capacity, is why the celebration is described as an event that sells out quickly, per NBC Los Angeles's reporting.
The setting itself is part of the draw. Liu Fang Yuan, or the Garden of Flowing Fragrance, is a 15-acre space considered one of the largest classical Chinese gardens outside China, and it cost roughly $54.6 million to build across multiple development phases through 2020, according to the South China Morning Post. The garden grew from an initial 3.5 acres in 2008 to its full 15-acre footprint upon completion.
Craftsmanship From Suzhou to San Marino
Much of what visitors will walk through at night was built by hand on the other side of the world before making its way to California. Architectural components for the garden — including wooden beams, roof tiles, granite terraces and paving stones — were manufactured in China and installed by specialized artisans from Suzhou working alongside local American contractors to meet California seismic codes, as reported by Pasadena Now. Suzhou has long been regarded as China's premier center for scholar garden design.
That heritage shows up in the garden's layout, which follows the tradition of 17th-century Ming Dynasty scholar gardens in Suzhou, according to Elite Magazine. The design centers on a body of water called the Lake of Reflected Fragrance, along with traditional pavilions, zigzag bridges and carved poetic calligraphy — features drawn from a tradition where private scholar gardens were designed as living landscape paintings blending nature and literary arts.
A Holiday Thousands of Years in the Making
The Mid-Autumn Festival itself traces back roughly 3,000 years to the Shang Dynasty, celebrated on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month when the full moon is meant to symbolize family unity, harvest and completeness, according to Tandem. Mooncakes and paper lanterns remain core traditional elements of the celebration.
Research and programming tied to the garden are supported by The Huntington's Center for East Asian Garden Studies, directed by curator Phillip E. Bloom, which organizes public lectures, symposia and academic research on East Asian garden design. The center collaborates with local universities, including USC, on landscape studies.
Part of a Bigger Moment for The Huntington
The nighttime festival arrives as The Huntington's broader 207-acre San Marino campus continues expanding its reach, employing roughly 600 staff members and welcoming more than 1 million visitors annually across its 16 themed botanical gardens and museum galleries. The institution is also in the midst of a major library overhaul, a $126.6 million capital project known as the Library/Art Building meant to modernize 83,000 square feet with new conservation studios and 20 linear miles of book storage.
Against that backdrop of physical growth, the Mid-Autumn Moon Celebration remains one of the estate's most visible cultural touchpoints, drawing crowds into a garden built specifically to echo centuries-old Chinese design traditions. With tickets already on sale and past years' attendance topping 4,000 visitors, organizers and outlets alike are signaling the same thing: don't wait too long to book a spot for the three evenings later this month.
