SF Chinatown’s Hungry Ghost Festival 2026

Submitted by the Event Organizer

Hungry Ghost Festival returns to San Francisco Chinatown.

The gates of the underworld are open. Come to Chinatown for peace buns, incense, fortune sticks, and a straw dragon packed with ten thousand sticks of burning incense that only comes alive after dark. Free and open to all. Grant Ave, between California and Sacramento.

Hungry Ghost Festival
September 5, 2026 | 2-6 pm
San Francisco Chinatown

Chinatown will transform into a rousing celebration of honoring ancestors and wandering spirits into the night.

On the fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month, the boundary between the living and the dead thins to nothing. Spirits return. We set the table for them — and for you.

Come by any time during the day. Peace buns are free while they last: steamed rice-flour buns with sweet red bean, offered at the altar and then shared with whoever is standing there. Light a stick of incense at the altar for your own ancestors, or for the wandering dead who have no one left to remember them. Shake the bamboo cylinder and draw a fortune stick and see where fate takes you. The Ghost King towers over the whole affair and will hold still for photographs.

Artist Leland Wong will be drawing on site and signing posters.

Stay until dark for the fire dragon to come to life. Ten thousand sticks of incense are driven into its straw body and lit, and the smoke it trails carries off sickness, pests, and bad luck.

Free. Everyone welcome. Grant Ave, between California and Sacramento.

Disclaimer: Please double check event information with the event organizer as events can be canceled, details can change after they are added to our calendar, and errors do occur.