Telluride Mushroom Festival

The Telluride Mushroom Festival is a five-day gathering devoted to fungi, held each August in Telluride, a mountain town in the San Juan Mountains of south-west Colorado. It is run by the Telluride Institute, a non-profit, under the line “Celebrating All Things Fungi”. Mushrooms are picked, grown, studied and eaten here, and this page looks at the part that draws a food traveller: foraging, tasting and growing.

Telluride Mushroom Festival 2026

The institute’s about page places the festival on “every third weekend of August”, and the 2026 edition ended on that weekend. The 2027 dates had not been published when this page was checked, on 6 October 2026.

Forage, taste, grow

• Foraging. Mushroom forays are on the programme, the festival’s way into the woods around town.
• The Wild Foods Dinner. The festival’s table is a dinner of wild foods, which the institute says lives on in memory of Katrina Blair.
• Growing and naming. The institute lists cultivation and identification among the topics of the talks, with psychedelic research and decriminalization: the festival covers the science and the culture of fungi as well as the kitchen.
• The vendors. Mushroom-related stalls set up in Elks Park, Oak Park and North Oak Street, in the centre of town.

Eat only a wild mushroom that an expert has identified: several species of the mountains are toxic, and some look like edible ones.

The rest of the programme

Beyond the table, the 2026 programme also had talks, the Mushroom Parade on Main Street, the Puff Ball, a costume party, and an evening of poetry.

Practical tips

• Altitude. The town sits at about 8,750 feet (2,670 m): take the first day slowly, and drink more water than you would at sea level.
• Mornings for the woods. August afternoons in the San Juans can bring thunderstorms. Forays and walks are best planned early in the day.
• Passes. The institute’s passes page announced the 2026 edition: check there what a pass includes before you go.
• Getting around. The centre is walkable, and a free gondola links it with Mountain Village, on the ridge above.

Where to stay and getting there

Telluride is a small town, and the festival falls in its summer season: rooms in the centre go first, Mountain Village adds more at the top of the gondola, and Ridgway and Montrose, further north by road, are the fallback. For a festival week here, the bed is the first thing to secure. Montrose Regional Airport is the usual gateway.

Planning for the next edition

In 2026 the festival ran from the Wednesday to the Sunday of the third weekend of August. That is a window to plan around, not a date: confirm it on the Telluride Institute’s site, the festival’s official page.