Thousands are expected to fill Naperville's Riverwalk Grand Pavilion on Sunday as ALMAS hosts its fourth annual Día de Muertos celebration, a free gathering built around a seven-level community altar, a cemetery-themed panteón of mock tombs, and performances meant to honor loved ones who have died. The event, called Día de Muertos: Celebrating Community and Life, is expected to draw about 3,000 visitors to the downtown pavilion.
According to the Chicago Tribune, this year's event will feature folklórico dancers and mariachi music alongside the seven-level community altar, where visitors can leave photos and mementos honoring the deceased. The Alliance of Latinos Motivating Action in the Suburbs, known as ALMAS, also plans to provide a four-by-four-foot space and mock tombs for the community panteón, a cemetery-themed area where participants personalize individual graves. Per the nonprofit's event listing, the celebration is billed as free and family-friendly, inviting people of all backgrounds to experience storytelling, ofrendas, live music and art tied to the holiday. The event takes place at the Grand Pavilion, 912 Honorary Sindt Memorial Ct. in Naperville.
A Family Tradition That Outgrew a Living Room
ALMAS founder and president Lili Burciaga has said the celebration began because her own family used to have to drive into Chicago to mark Día de Muertos, since few local observances existed. The nonprofit, founded in April 2023 as a membership-based 501(c)(3) organization based in Naperville, launched the gathering to give the western suburbs their own place to celebrate. Burciaga has also said the event has grown in popularity over the years, to the point that other local municipalities have started hosting their own Día de Muertos celebrations.
The mock graves at the panteón carry specific meaning for Burciaga, who has said they pay homage to Latin American traditions of cleaning and decorating loved ones' graves with marigolds and food offerings. This year's programming also includes a Reflections of Life memorial featuring a slideshow of community-submitted photos of people who have died, along with a Monarch Tribute showcasing butterfly-themed artwork from Chicago-area youth, including students from Naperville, Plainfield and Chicago as well as young people from a Cook County juvenile detention center. Some of those students have dedicated their monarch artworks to deceased loved ones, with the pieces displayed around a tree meant to symbolize the butterflies' migratory journey.
Monarchs, Migration and a Shared Season
The monarch imagery is tied to a real seasonal overlap: each fall, millions of monarch butterflies travel from the United States and Canada to the mountains of Michoacán, Mexico, typically arriving as families begin honoring loved ones for Día de Muertos. The Monarch Joint Venture notes that in some Michoacán and State of Mexico traditions, the butterflies are regarded as the souls of ancestors returning to visit for the holiday, since their arrival coincides with the observance between November 1 and 2. The butterflies then remain in Mexico from November through March before beginning their journey north again.
Those wintering grounds have drawn international attention of their own. National Geographic reports that two UNESCO-protected sanctuaries in Mexico's Central Highlands serve as refuge for millions of monarchs fleeing colder temperatures in North America between November and March, even as the World Wildlife Fund has recorded a 90% decline in the monarch population over the last two decades. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has separately described the early-November monarch migration as nearing its end, with butterflies completing a roughly 3,000-mile flight before resting for the winter in Mexico's transvolcanic mountains.
Dance, Art and a Catrina Catwalk
Día de los Muertos is widely celebrated on November 1 and 2 across Mexico and Latin America, honoring deceased loved ones with food, music, community gatherings and homemade altars called ofrendas. ALMAS' version of that tradition opens with a performance from Danzantes Unidos Mitotiliztli, a group presenting a traditional Toltec-Chichimeca dance. The event grounds will also feature catrina and alebrije sculptures, and artist Jose Art is set to present a live catrina painting during the celebration.
Visitors can also expect a catrina-and-catrín catwalk and contest, plus an invitation from artist Emanuel Zárate Ortiz for attendees to help paint one of his monumental catrina sculptures. Food vendors will sell tacos, gorditas and pan de muerto, while artisanal vendors plan to offer marigolds, personalized candles and personalized stuffed animals. Burciaga has said the celebration welcomes everyone, including people attending for the first time.
ALMAS' celebration has evolved each year since its debut, with the third annual event held on November 1, 2025, also at the Riverwalk Grand Pavilion. That 2025 gathering, previously reported by the Chicago Tribune, ran from 2 to 7 p.m. and included a Mercadito artisan market, a Monarch Remembrance Tree, and symbolic tombs that community members could reserve and decorate themselves. A year earlier, the Daily Herald reported on the second annual celebration, also held at the Riverwalk Grand Pavilion in 2024, underscoring how the gathering has become an annual fixture for the Naperville area.
