Things to Do in Montreal This October

By the first weekend, the best things to do in Montreal during October start strong with steins filled at Jean-Talon Market and on Monk Boulevard, art publishers setting up tables at UQAM, projection artists lighting the underside of the Van Horne viaduct, and the SAT getting ready to stay open until 5 a.m. The best new restaurants, new cafés, and new bars will keep coming if you need to pepper a day or night out with something never-before-tasted in the city.

After that? Thanksgiving weekend brings the marathon and the final days of World Press Photo at Marché Bonsecours, and the middle of the month somehow fits ska, burlesque, tabletop gaming, emerging art, and a gem show into the same four days. Then Halloween stops being a single night and turns into a week of shadow casts, fetish cabaret, and silent horror in a church.

October's concert calendar would pass for a festival lineup anywhere else. Gorillaz open the month at the Bell Centre on October 3 with Little Simz and Deltron 3030 in tow, the same night Interpol play L'Olympia. Four days later, Metric, Broken Social Scene, and Stars share a stage at Place Bell. The Smashing Pumpkins (October 9), Olivia Rodrigo (October 21 and 22), and Katseye (October 30) keep the Bell Centre busy, while Sting skips the arena altogether for a run at Théâtre St-Denis. Montreal-based producer Apashe teams up with the OSM at Place des Arts from October 8 to 10, The Black Keys hit Laval on October 16, and Pat Metheny, Lucinda Williams, and Thundercat fill in the gaps. On Halloween, The Dresden Dolls take over Théâtre Beanfield. (If you'd rather find something smaller, our guide to the city's best live music venues is a good place to start.)

Plenty of what follows is free, but the ticketed nights are worth booking ahead. And dress for the evening, not the afternoon: October in Montreal has a way of reminding you what comes next.

Rendez-vous Angus and the Autumn Creative Market: Art and artisans at the Technopôle Angus

Twenty photographs are scattered around the Technopôle Angus this fall, some mounted along the Locoshop Angus footbridge, others tucked into the eco-district's urban woods. They make up Les Rendez-vous Angus, a free outdoor exhibition presented with Art Souterrain through October 7. Vincent Drouin's Dormir le fjord captures the fishing villages that appear on the frozen Saguenay River every winter and vanish every spring, while Éliane Excoffier's Mille lieues (les immergées) blurs the line between submerged landscapes and shoreline. Curator Ariane Plante chose work that favours instinct and dreaminess over literal documentation.

Time your visit for October 3 or 4 and you can pair the walk with the Autumn Creative Market inside Locoshop Angus, where Collectif Créatif Montréal gathers more than 180 local designers and artisans, with a different lineup each weekend.

MAPP_MTL: Ten years of turning walls into screens

Ten editions in, MAPP_MTL still does its best work in unlikely places. The heart of the projection mapping festival, the free Fête de quartier numérique, runs October 1 to 3 from 5 to 10 p.m. at the Van Horne skatepark, under the viaduct, rain or shine (registration required). Once the sun drops around 6:45 p.m., artists including Sabrina Ratté, Studio Baillat, and Chien Champion turn the concrete into a canvas.

The rest of the festival spreads out from there: projections in the Quartier des spectacles through October 5, a late-night Soirée MAPP at Moment Factory on October 2, and a free Tagtool jam at Caserne 26 on October 4. Our full MAPP_MTL guide has the details.

World Press Photo: Last call at Marché Bonsecours

The year's news tends to blur together until you see it printed large. That's the effect of the World Press Photo exhibition, which fills the De la Commune hall at Marché Bonsecours until October 12. The winning images, chosen from tens of thousands of submissions by photographers around the world, are shown in large format across categories that trace the past year's events.

The Netherlands-based World Press Photo Foundation has run the contest since 1955. The Montreal edition, now in its 19th year, draws more than 68,000 visitors and adds exhibitions by Quebec artists and photojournalists alongside the international work. Thanksgiving Monday is the last day, so don't leave it to the final hour of the long weekend.

VOLUME MTL: The art book fair comes back to UQAM

For a few days in early October, the best place in Montreal to hold art in your hands is a university atrium. VOLUME MTL, the international art publishing festival, returns for its ninth edition from October 1 to 8, and every activity is free.

The centrepiece is the art book fair on October 3 and 4, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., at l'Agora in UQAM's Cœur des sciences pavilion on Président-Kennedy, a short walk from Place-des-Arts métro. Handmade zines share table space with artist editions and photobooks, and the people who made them are usually standing right behind the stack, happy to explain.

Oktoberfest at Jean-Talon Market: Steins between squash

Jean-Talon Market spends most of October buried in apples and squash, but its first weekend belongs to beer. From October 2 to 4, Montreal's public markets and the region's microbreweries turn the aisles into a German-style party for Oktoberfest.

Entry is free. A glass costs $3.50 and a bock (the big mug) is $7, card only, so leave the cash at home. Hours run 3 to 10 p.m. on Friday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Saturday, and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sunday, which makes a Friday after-work stop in Little Italy the most civilized way to do it.

Phénomena: Fifteen years of the unclassifiable

Phénomena has always been the festival for work that refuses to sit in one category, and its 15th edition, running October 3 to 22, holds that line. Created in 2012 by D. Kimm and Les Filles électriques, and now opening what its organizers call a new chapter with artistic director Gaétan Paré, the program mixes performance, dance, music, cinema, and cabaret, and puts established names next to artists most people haven't heard of yet. Strangeness, beauty, and humour get equal billing.

Circle the closing night. On October 22, Marie Davidson brings City of Clowns to Phénomena for its final performance, a fitting send-off for a festival that has spent 15 years betting on the singular.

Monktoberfest: Ville-Émard closes the street

Monk Boulevard doesn't get many chances to show off, so when it does, it goes all in. For the fourth year, Monktoberfest closes the stretch in front of Théâtre Paradoxe, between Jolicoeur and Jacques-Hertel, on Saturday, October 3, for a free day-long party that feels like all of Ville-Émard showed up.

Burning BRASs Band kicks things off at 12:30 p.m., Les Lunatiques take the main stage mid-afternoon, and Bleu Jeans Bleu headline at 6 p.m. before the Winslow Dancers lead a line-dancing lesson at 8. In between, the boulevard's own merchants handle the food (Pastamalfi, Gagaglaces, and Taco & Margarita among them), a new artisans' zone makes its debut, and the family zone keeps kids busy with face paint and a wandering bubble fairy.

Making Time at the SAT: A Philadelphia institution settles in

Dave P. launched Making Time in Philadelphia in 2000 as an all-night party built around indie rock and electronic music, and over the years it has hosted The Strokes, LCD Soundsystem, and Interpol. Its third Montreal edition takes over two floors of the SAT on October 3, from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m.

In Espace SAT, Olof Dreijer (one half of The Knife) performs his solo album Loud Bloom, Detroit electro project Dopplereffekt plays a live A/V set, and Aurora Halal, OKO DJ, and Dave P. round out the night under a lighting installation by Klip Collective's Ricardo Rivera. Up in the Satosphere, Montreal's t-nex and Panorama Bar resident Massimiliano Pagliara play inside the dome. Tickets start at $28.71 and include Friday's pre-party at Système. Read more about how the lineup came together.

The Secret Chord: Leonard Cohen, back at the Segal

Montreal has never needed much convincing to spend an evening with Leonard Cohen. The Secret Chord, Soulpepper's staged concert built from his songs and reflections, returns to the Segal Centre's Sylvan Adams Theatre from October 5 to 25 after sold-out runs in Toronto and Montreal.

Created by Frank Cox-O'Connell, Marni Jackson, and Mike Ross, the 90-minute show brings back audience favourites and adds new featured performers, with Divine Brown, Beau Dixon, Andrew Penner, Emily Schultz, and Michael Torontow backed by a four-piece band. It moves through love, loss, spirituality, and the search for meaning, which is to say it covers Cohen fairly well.

Habs Home Opener: The Bell Centre gets its noise back

After road games in Toronto and Pittsburgh, the Canadiens play their first home game of the 2026–27 season at the Bell Centre on Tuesday, October 6, against the Carolina Hurricanes. Home openers here are as much ritual as sport, and a franchise founded in 1909 with 24 Stanley Cups behind it has a long memory for occasions like this.

It's the start of a busy month on home ice, with Nashville, Detroit, Buffalo (twice), and San Jose also visiting, plus a Halloween night game against Pittsburgh for anyone who'd rather wear a jersey than a costume.

Festival du nouveau cinéma: Fifty-five years of the new

The Festival du nouveau cinéma has been at this for more than half a century, and its 55th edition, October 8 to 18, sticks with the formula that earned it the title it gives itself, the dean of Canadian film festivals: more than 200 works from around 60 countries, with emerging filmmakers screening alongside established auteurs.

The festival's idea of "new" works on three levels (new creators, new approaches, new technologies), so the program runs from features to shorts to work that barely fits the word film. Home base is the Cinémathèque québécoise on de Maisonneuve, but the real pleasure is the late screening you pick almost at random and end up talking about for the rest of the fall.

Marathon Beneva de Montréal: Five boroughs before lunch

The Marathon Beneva de Montréal is one of the rare ways to see five boroughs in a single morning. Race weekend runs October 9 to 11, and Sunday's races, from the full 42.2 km down to the 1 km and a mile, start at Parc Jean-Drapeau and finish at Parc Maisonneuve, crossing the city shore to shore.

Non-runners have a part to play, too. The Expo-Marathon, with exhibitors and talks on health and running, is free to visit, and the course is long enough that there's a stretch of sidewalk near almost everyone who wants to cheer.

Ramen Ramen Fes: Two weeks of broth

Montreal takes its ramen seriously, and for two weeks it gets to argue about it officially. Ramen Ramen Fes, now in its fifth edition, runs October 12 to 25, with ramen shops and pop-ups across the city each serving a featured bowl.