Lunar Faire’s Final Five Nights Move Across Five Very Different New Jersey Grounds

Lunar Faire is one of those events that reads like a list until you actually go. Vendors, fire performers, fortunes, drag, music, group spellwork, potions, costumes and a night market can all be listed separately, but standing inside the faire after dark is when the pieces start behaving like one event. The crowd participates instead of simply attending, the costumes become part of the scenery, and a patch of New Jersey ground that looked ordinary in daylight gets temporarily claimed by something much stranger. That last part is especially important because Lunar Faire is nomadic. The organizers describe it as a traveling, immersive night market built around the strange, unusual and handmade, and the 2026 season has already moved through parks, fairgrounds and other event spaces around the state. There is no permanent Lunar Faire landscape. Every host site changes the geometry of the night, and the faire has to build its own world inside whatever it is given. The published calendar now shows five nights left in the season. The run starts Sept. 12 at the Middlesex County Fairgrounds in East Brunswick and ends Oct. 24 with a seven-hour Halloweekend at the Sussex County Fairgrounds. Between them are a day camp wrapped around a lake, a Scandinavian-American cultural park, and an 81-acre county showground. The themes will change, but so will the ground under everyone’s feet. The remaining 2026 Lunar Faire calendar

Date | Theme | Ground | Town | Time
Sat. Sept. 12 | Elements | Middlesex County Fairgrounds | East Brunswick | 5–10 p.m.
Sat. Sept. 26 | Zodiac | Liberty Lake Day Camp | Bordentown | 5–10 p.m.
Sat. Oct. 3 | Vasquerade | Vasa Park | Hackettstown / Budd Lake | 5–10 p.m.
Fri. Oct. 16 | Dark Carnival | East Freehold Showgrounds | Freehold | 5–10 p.m.
Sat. Oct. 24 | Halloweekend | Sussex County Fairgrounds | Augusta | 3–10 p.m.

Lunar Faire says attendance is limited, events are generally rain or shine, and tickets are non-refundable. Its general attendance FAQ says children 10 and under are free except at some special events; each individual Eventbrite listing should be checked before heading out because venue-specific parking, accessibility and ticket details vary. Why the final run is worth watching The themes are doing more than renaming the same market. Elements returns to East Brunswick with fire, air, water and earth as the costume and programming prompt. Zodiac follows at Liberty Lake, where Lunar Faire is explicitly encouraging attendees to arrive with their signs, birth charts and astrological rivalries ready. Vasquerade brings masks into October at Vasa Park. Dark Carnival turns Freehold toward the sideshow, with the current event listing advertising a fire-wire walker, a levitating witch, drag, fire performance and mediumship. Then Halloweekend stretches the usual five-hour format to seven hours at Sussex, where the organizers are calling it the biggest and weirdest night market of the season. None of that requires dressing for the theme. Lunar Faire’s own attendance guide makes room for everything from jeans and a T-shirt to elaborate handmade costumes, which is part of why the crowd works. The event is immersive without demanding that everyone perform the same role. Some people come to shop. Some come dressed like the moon personally sent them. Some arrive alone. Some bring children. Some spend half the night watching the performers, and some somehow end up in a drum circle. Having attended Lunar Faire before, the thing worth emphasizing in an advance is that it rewards wandering. The schedule matters, but so do the things encountered between scheduled acts. A vendor conversation becomes twenty minutes. A costume stops traffic. A performer appears in a part of the grounds that felt empty five minutes earlier. The faire is organized, but it benefits from feeling slightly discovered. The ground changes the faire Middlesex County Fairgrounds — East Brunswick 655 Cranbury Road, East Brunswick, NJ 08816 The East Brunswick stop uses a true county-fair landscape. The Middlesex County Fairgrounds normally holds the annual agricultural fair, drawing tens of thousands of visitors to rides, exhibits, farm displays, vendors and entertainment. For Lunar Faire, that translates into broad outdoor event space, established fair infrastructure and multiple parking approaches rather than a tightly landscaped park. It is a comparatively open canvas, which lets the lights, vendor rows and performers create most of the visual environment themselves. The Sept. 12 Elements faire runs from 5 to 10 p.m. Liberty Lake Day Camp — Bordentown 1195 Florence Columbus Road, Bordentown, NJ 08505 Liberty Lake is the most landscape-driven stop in the remaining run. The camp describes its property as 60 shaded acres surrounding a six-acre lake, with outdoor activity spaces spread through the campus. That means Zodiac will be set inside a place designed around trees, water and movement rather than exhibition fields. The lake and camp setting should give this one a more enclosed, exploratory feeling after dark, with the faire adapting itself to pathways and established recreation space. The Eventbrite listing notes paid parking, and the camp’s regular visitor information notes that parts of the property involve a hill, so anyone with mobility concerns should check Lunar Faire’s event-specific accessibility information before attending. Vasa Park — Hackettstown / Budd Lake GPS: 1 Vasa Drive, Hackettstown, NJ 07840 Vasa Park is a Scandinavian-American recreational and cultural center, not a municipal fairground. Its event spaces include Viking Hall, a clubhouse, a covered outdoor pavilion and surrounding grass areas, and the property routinely hosts community festivals, music events and historical gatherings. For Vasquerade, that creates a different kind of frame: less county-fair scale, more cultural-park gathering ground, with built structures and a pavilion helping shape the night. The current Lunar Faire listing includes free parking and runs from 5 to 10 p.m. East Freehold Showgrounds — Freehold 1500 Kozloski Road, Freehold, NJ 07728 East Freehold Showgrounds is the biggest pure showground in the middle of the final run. Monmouth County Parks describes the property as an 81-acre site used for horse shows, dog shows, special events and the Monmouth County Fair. That much open event ground makes sense for Dark Carnival, especially with a fire-wire walker and other large-format performance elements in the published lineup. Lunar Faire’s event listing says general parking will be on grass, with accessible parking on gravel closer to the gate. The Friday-night faire runs from 5 to 10 p.m. Sussex County Fairgrounds — Augusta 37 Plains Road, Augusta, NJ 07822 The season finale moves into the infrastructure of the New Jersey State Fair. Sussex is not simply an open field: the grounds support agricultural areas, livestock pavilions, barns, exhibit buildings, a conservatory, marketplace space and large outdoor entertainment zones. That scale is useful for a Halloweekend designed to run two hours longer than a standard Lunar Faire and carry a larger collection of programming. The published listing currently runs from 3 to 10 p.m., with free parking. If any stop can absorb the faire at maximum volume without making the site feel swallowed by it, this is probably the one. A Lunar Faire advance can list the fire performers, vendors, themes and ticket times, but the real reason to follow this final run is that the event keeps proving how portable a culture can be. The faire does not need a permanent building to have a recognizable identity. It needs darkness, enough room for people to circulate, people willing to participate and a venue willing to let the strange arrive for a night. Five dates remain, and none will be quite the same physical event. East Brunswick is a fairground. Bordentown gives the night a lake. Vasa Park adds a cultural-park footprint. Freehold opens into a massive showground. Sussex closes the season inside the scale of a state-fair complex. The market travels, but the ground gets a vote. That is part of what makes Lunar Faire worth going back to. You can know what the event is and still not know exactly what the night will feel like until the sun goes down at the next place. Event Details

What | Lunar Faire final five nights (Elements, Zodiac, Vasquerade, Dark Carnival, Halloweekend)
When | Sept. 12 through Oct. 24, 2026 (see calendar)
Where | Five New Jersey grounds beginning at Middlesex County Fairgrounds, East Brunswick
Tickets | Limited attendance; non-refundable; check each Eventbrite listing
Also | Generally rain or shine; children 10 and under free except some special events

SOURCE NOTES • Lunar Faire — official site and 2026 calendar
• Lunar Faire — attendance guide
• Eventbrite — Elements in East Brunswick, Sept. 12
• Eventbrite — Zodiac at Liberty Lake Day Camp, Sept. 26
• Eventbrite — Vasquerade at Vasa Park, Oct. 3