Canal Convergence 2026: Your Guide to an Old Town Evening

At 4 p.m. on a November weeknight, the margarita at Cobre Kitchen + Cocktails inside Canopy by Hilton Old Town Scottsdale will cost $10 if you mention Canal Convergence. The art along the Arizona Canal doesn't switch on until 6 p.m. This year, for the first time, the festival has a reason to fill those two hours.

Canal Convergence 2026 runs Nov. 6 through 15 at the Scottsdale Waterfront under the theme "Western Nature." This is its 15th year, and it falls during the city's 75th anniversary. As in 2025, it's free and runs ten nights. Last year's edition, themed "SHOWTIME," ran Nov. 7 to 16, so the format itself hasn't changed. What has changed is how far the festival reaches beyond the water and how its weeknights are scheduled. Put those two changes together and the best way to do Canal Convergence this year is as an Old Town evening that ends at the canal.

The Festival Now Starts Before the Art Turns On

For the first time, Scottsdale Arts has teamed up with Old Town businesses on what it calls Canal Convergence x Old Town. Participating restaurants, shops and galleries are offering discounts and festival-themed items made for the event. They'll have a Canal Convergence x Old Town poster in the window. If you bring a receipt from one of them to the festival's Information Booth, you get a free piece of Canal Convergence swag while supplies last.

The receipt-for-swag setup links an Old Town stop to the canal visit that comes after it. The full list of participants and offers is posted by Old Town Scottsdale, and the current lineup looks like this:

Look at the timing and a pattern shows up. Two of these offers run on caffeine and pastry. Cobre's only works during a set window that closes right when the festival opens. Taken together, the list points toward the hours before dark.

Six of the Ten Nights Close at 9 p.m.

The festival's hours aren't the same every night, and the pattern decides how much time you get at the canal:

• 6 to 10 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 6; Saturday, Nov. 7; Friday, Nov. 13; and Saturday, Nov. 14
• 6 to 9 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 8, through Thursday, Nov. 12, and again Sunday, Nov. 15

So six nights give you three hours of art and four nights give you four. Walter Productions' fire shows run nightly at 6:30, 7:30 and 8:30 p.m. On a 9 p.m. night, the last show starts 30 minutes before the festival closes. If you arrive at 7:45 on a Tuesday, you have one fire show left and about an hour to see a corridor that runs along the canal's paths and bridges between Scottsdale Road and Goldwater Boulevard.

The shorter weeknights are also where Scottsdale Arts put its newest programming. For the first time, the Herberger Stage at Soleri Plaza has weekday events. That includes "WEARABLE WILDS: Fashion, Technology & Ecologies of the West," a fashion show produced by Arizona State University FIDM students, on Thursday, Nov. 12. The same night, garments from Jeremy Arviso's "Working West" Dress-Up Space go on stage in his own fashion show. Nov. 12 is a 9 p.m. night, which makes it the clearest case for starting in Old Town while it's still light.

A Weeknight, Hour by Hour

Here is one way to fit a 6-to-9 night together, using only what's on the schedule:

1. 4 p.m., Old Town. Start at Cobre for the happy-hour window, or browse at Bella Fine Art, Gorgeous Things or Mavericks of Scottsdale. Keep your receipt.
2. 5:30 p.m., walk to the Waterfront. Swing past the Information Booth to trade the receipt for swag before the crowds arrive.
3. 6 p.m., tours begin. The one-hour Scottsdale Arts Art Tour costs $6 and requires registration. It starts at 6 p.m. every festival night, with ASL translation on Nov. 9 and Spanish translation on Nov. 11.
4. 7:30 p.m., fire show. Once the tour wraps, the 7:30 Walter Productions show is the next one up.
5. 7:45 p.m., Herberger Stage. The Canal Convergence Beer and Wine Garden next to the stage has food trucks, dessert vendors, wine, beer, canned cocktails and soft drinks every night.
6. 8:30 p.m., last fire show, then a final walk along the corridor before 9.

On a Friday or Saturday, the same plan gets an extra hour at the end. On weekends, the stage also has live music from Arizona-based and regional acts, with headliners QVLN, who play Latin pop, and Nodaway, an indie rock band.

The 6 p.m. start also explains the free SRP Canal History Tours. They require an RSVP and run at 6 p.m. on Nov. 6 to 8 and Nov. 13 to 15. Every tour on the program starts as the art turns on. If you want one, everything else that evening has to fit around it.

What You're Walking Past

The theme focuses on the environmental and cultural landscapes of the American West, the Southwest and Arizona. In August, Scottsdale Arts announced the 2026 artworks:

• "grandmother turtle" and "the weight of light" by In Theory Art Studios, with the first developed alongside Nora Naranjo-Morse and Laura Tohe
• "KaKtos" by Amigo & Amigo
• "APOGEE" by Chalk River Labs
• "DreamRider" and "Sky Wrangler" by William Nemitoff of Curious Form
• "The Way The West Was Sold" by Jolly Productions
• "Desert Choir" by OTTOMA
• "Another Slice of Reality: An Evolving Nature" by Shaoyu Su x LedPulse
• "Western Fire Garden" by Walter Productions
• "PrairieFire" by True North Absurdities

Some performances are tied to specific pieces. NicoleOlson|MovementChaos performs at "APOGEE" on Nov. 14. Scottsdale Community College Dance gives two site-specific performances on Nov. 15, at 7 and 8 p.m.

The Nights Worth Circling

Across the ten nights there are nearly 100 workshops, performances, tours and other activities. Performances, drop-in workshops and some activities are free. Nightly art tours, ticketed workshops and certain special events need tickets, and those went on sale at the end of September. These dates have something specific on them:

• Monday, Nov. 9: Painting with natural pigments with artists from the Center for Imagination in the Borderlands at the Nationwide Innovation Zone, plus the ASL-translated art tour.
• Tuesday, Nov. 10: Beading with Maxica Colectivo.
• Wednesday, Nov. 11: The Spanish-translated art tour.
• Thursday, Nov. 12: WEARABLE WILDS and the "Working West" fashion show at the Herberger Stage.
• Saturday, Nov. 14: NicoleOlson|MovementChaos at "APOGEE."
• Sunday, Nov. 15: Bandana printing with Jeremy Arviso and the Scottsdale Community College Dance performances. It's also a 9 p.m. closing night.

The Scottsdale Arts Roundabout at Marshall Way will feature western-related engagements hosted by community partners, including Western Spirit: Scottsdale's Museum of the West, CALA Alliance, Art Heals Arizona, Puente, Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Scottsdale and S'edav Va'aki Museum. In the Scottsdale Arts announcement, Yaritza Flores Bustos, community engagement coordinator for Scottsdale Arts Learning & Innovation, said she wanted "to create a space where the roundabout could hold many forms of knowledge, memory and collective imagination." Western Spirit's buy-one-get-one admission makes the museum an easy stop before the festival, since it's also one of the roundabout's partners.

Parking and the Trip Home

Old Town's public garages are free, and street parking has a three-hour limit. Old Town Scottsdale's parking guide names the Waterfront Underground, Southbridge Underground, Nordstrom and 3rd Ave garages among its options. A 4 p.m. start and a 9 p.m. finish adds up to five hours, which is over the street-parking limit. A garage space is the safer choice for this kind of evening.

The city's posted trolley schedule runs every 20 minutes on weekdays from 5:45 a.m. to 7:45 p.m. That gets you into Old Town for an early start, but the last trolley leaves before the 8:30 fire show. Plan to get home by car or on foot.

If an evening at Canal Convergence reminds you how much you like being near Old Town, or makes you wonder what a place within walking distance of the Waterfront would look like, The Torie Ellens Team is happy to talk it through over coffee in Old Town. Schedule Your Concierge Consultation.