One of the quiet advantages of living downtown without a car is that the city occasionally closes its streets to cars on purpose. Open Streets Minneapolis does exactly that — it takes a major commercial corridor, shuts it to traffic for a day, and hands it back to people on foot, on bikes, on skateboards and in wheelchairs. It is free, it is a genuinely good afternoon, and in 2026 there are three of them, all this fall.
The 2026 Open Streets dates and routes
- Saturday, September 12 — West Broadway, in north Minneapolis.
- Saturday, September 26 — Nicollet Avenue between Lake Street and 46th Street, plus Riverside Avenue between Cedar Avenue and 19th Avenue. Hosted by the Lyndale Neighborhood Association.
- Sunday, October 11 — Hennepin Avenue between West 26th and 36th Streets, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Hosted by the Uptown Association.
Dates and routes come from the City of Minneapolis, which announced the 2026 host organizations in June and keeps the running details on its Open Streets event page. The Uptown Association posts its own timing for the Hennepin date on the Open Streets Hennepin page. Worth a check the week before — corridors have shifted in past years.
What actually happens on a car-free street
Less than you would expect, in the best way. The businesses along the route spill onto the sidewalk, there is food, there is live music, there are bike-repair stands and pop-up protected bike lanes and painted intersections the city is testing out. Mostly, though, there are just a lot of people walking down the middle of a street that is normally four lanes of traffic, which turns out to be a strangely pleasant thing to do. The city counted roughly 120,000 people across four events in 2025.
Nothing costs money to attend. Bring a wallet for the food.
Getting there from 9th Street, without a car
All three routes are outside downtown, so none of them is a walk from our door at 215 South 9th Street — but all three are an easy transit or bike trip, and that is rather the point of an event about not driving.
The Hennepin date in October is the simplest: the METRO E Line bus rapid transit runs Hennepin Avenue between downtown and Uptown, and it will drop you inside the closure. For the Nicollet and Riverside routes on September 26, and for West Broadway on September 12, plug your start and end points into Metro Transit’s trip planner the morning of — routes near a street closure get detoured, so the live plan beats a schedule you memorised last week.
If you would rather ride, all three corridors connect to the city’s bike network, and the ride south from downtown to Nicollet or Hennepin is flat and short. Open Streets is one of the few days a year when the destination is also the route.
Why this matters if you are staying a month, not a weekend
Guests who book a studio here for four or six weeks — travel nurses, people relocating, anyone whose insurance company is paying for a temporary place — usually arrive with the same question: do I need to rent a car? Our honest answer is mostly no, and days like these are part of the reason. Between the skyway a block away, groceries within a short walk, and a transit system that reaches the neighbourhoods worth visiting, the car mostly sits there. We ran the numbers on what that car actually costs you downtown, and it is more than most people guess.
An Open Streets Saturday is also just a good way to learn a city you have suddenly landed in. You end up in Uptown or along Nicollet on foot, at walking speed, finding the coffee shop you will go back to in November.
And if it rains
Open Streets runs rain or shine, but if you would rather see the city from a seat, Minneapolis Trolley Tours runs vintage trolley sightseeing out of the historic Pillsbury Mansion, and the Pillsbury Club is a fine place to end an afternoon. Neither requires a car either.
Staying downtown this fall
Oakland’s on 9th is a restored 1889 brownstone at 215 South 9th Street with furnished month-to-month studios — full kitchens, WiFi, all utilities, heat and free laundry included, no lease, and no contract. Stay a night, a week or a month; some units are pet friendly. Book at secure.webrez.com/hotel/3097 or call us at (612) 314-5124 and we will talk you through which studio suits.
Keep reading: What Was Found Inside the Walls at Oakland’s on 9th? Newspaper, From 1889.