Art lovers in Rocklin can skip the tickets and the small talk with a gallery clerk this month — the Placer Artists Tour is back, inviting visitors straight into working studios across the region for free. The 33rd annual edition kicked off Friday and runs two separate weekends in November, with doors open to the public from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day.
The tour spans November 6 through 8 and then again November 13 through 15, according to the Placer Artists Tour's own FAQ page. There's no cost to attend and no tickets required, the organizer says, and visitors don't need to book appointments ahead of time to pop into a participating studio. The event's reach extends across Placer County, including the Rocklin and Roseville area, as well as Lincoln, Granite Bay, Loomis, Penryn, Newcastle and Auburn.
The City of Rocklin, California Government flagged the tour's return in a Facebook post Friday, pointing locals toward the chance to visit studios, meet the artists behind the work and watch their creative process firsthand. That framing lines up with how organizers describe the experience on their own site: guests can step into an artist's studio, see how the work actually gets made, talk shop with the person who made it, and buy a piece on the spot if something catches their eye.
What's New for the 33rd Year
Sample promotional language published in the organizer's artist resources section refers to the event outright as the “33rd annual Placer Artists Tour,” confirming how far back the tradition stretches. That's a jump from the 2024 tour, which billed itself as the 31st annual event and ran across a main November weekend plus a separate encore weekend later in the month, according to the organizer's 2024 guide map.
Attendance figures for 2026 haven't been published, but the tour's recent track record gives a sense of scale. The 2025 tour featured 123 artists, galleries and art schools, per the same FAQ page. The 2024 map similarly listed a dedicated Rocklin/Roseville section of participants, including artist Carolyn McNabb among those featured that year.
How to Plan a Visit
Because the tour doesn't require tickets or reservations, visitors are free to wander between studios at their own pace across either weekend. The organizer does offer an optional, free pre-registration that unlocks extras like prize and gift drawings along with access to something called the Bidcrest Passport app, according to the FAQ. None of that is required to simply show up and look around, though.
For anyone mapping out which studios to hit, the Placer Artists Tour provides a full list of participating artists, their studio locations and tour maps on its website. With two weekends on the calendar and stops scattered from Rocklin to Auburn, there's plenty of time left to work a studio crawl into the rest of November.
