This Month in San Marcos: Late September and the Turn Toward Fall (2026)

The tubes came off the river on Saturday the 26th. Texas State Tubes runs to the last Saturday in September and not a weekend past it, and this year that Saturday also carried Family Weekend and a 5 p.m. kickoff against Incarnate Word, so the season didn't end quietly. It ended in traffic.

September was the month when everything in this town landed on the same three Saturdays. What comes next is the opposite: a calendar that spreads out over two months, moves some of its weight southwest toward Gruene and New Braunfels, and gets a lot more comfortable to stand around in. If you read our September roundup earlier in the month, this is the other half of it. Everything below is October and November.

What just closed

Tubing, for the year. Texas State Tubes' season is over, and with it the version of a San Marcos river day that involves a shuttle bus and no thinking. The river hasn't changed at all, which is the part visitors find hard to believe: it comes out of the San Marcos Springs at about 72°F and stays there through January. What's gone is the machinery. The Lions Club rental at City Park runs its own reduced fall schedule at (512) 396-5466, and kayak and paddleboard outfitters set their own calendars, so a phone call beats a website every time from here on.

If being on the water still appeals, the glass-bottom boats at the Meadows Center don't stop for the season. They go out daily over the spring vents at Spring Lake, each boat holds 20, and the timing catches people out: the center closes at 5 p.m. and the last tour leaves at 4:30. Plan it as an afternoon stop rather than the last thing you do. The Wetlands Boardwalk there is still closed for repairs, so don't build a visit around it. Our full write-up on the boats is here.

Football stops being a warm-up

Texas State's three September home games were all non-conference. That changes on Saturday, October 3, when the Bobcats open Pac-12 play at San Diego State. It's an away game, which for anyone in town means a rare early-October Saturday with no stadium traffic and no game-day parking rate. Worth knowing if you're picking a weekend to shop.

Four home dates remain, all conference games, all at UFCU Stadium about ten minutes north of us by car:

• Thursday, October 15, 7:00 p.m. vs. Colorado State. A Thursday-night game, themed Bobcats Blackout. A weeknight kickoff makes for a different kind of stay than a Saturday one, and it puts your Friday morning at the outlets instead of in a stadium exit line.
• Saturday, October 24, 6:30 p.m. vs. Utah State. Homecoming, with the Spirit Parade at 9 a.m. The biggest hotel day left on the calendar in San Marcos.
• Saturday, November 14, 3:00 p.m. vs. Fresno State. An afternoon kickoff in what is usually the most pleasant weather of the whole season.
• Saturday, November 21, 5:00 p.m. vs. Washington State. The last home game of the year.

Kickoff times move, and parking maps and bag rules change week to week, so txst.com/gameday is the live source on any given Saturday. Boko's Backyard, the free tailgate zone on the campus rec fields across from the stadium, opens roughly six hours before kickoff for most games, and anyone bringing their own setup reserves a space by the Thursday of game week.

Homecoming is the one to think about properly. A 9 a.m. parade and a 6:30 p.m. kickoff leave most of a day in between, which is more free afternoon than a game day usually hands you, and it's the day of the four we'd expect the town to be fullest.

One parking fact carries over from summer and still catches people. The paid lot at City Park, down by the river, charges out-of-area visitors on a sliding scale that tops out at $15 for a full day, and switches to a flat $25 on Texas State event days. It has worked that way since July 2025, and returning visitors who remember the lot being free are the ones who get surprised. All four remaining home dates are event days by that definition, so if you're pairing a morning by the water with an evening kickoff, budget the flat rate or come back for the car later.

The festival calendar moves southwest

October is when the interesting dates stop being in San Marcos and start being twenty to forty-five minutes down the road.

Gruene Music & Wine Fest, October 8–11. Four days in the historic district on the edge of New Braunfels, built around Texas wine and the music that Gruene Hall has been booking since 1878. The district itself is a few walkable blocks once you've parked, which is most of why it works as a half-day.

Gruene Market Days, October 17–18. The artisan market that takes over the same district on a weekend most months, free to get into. If the Music & Wine Fest sounds like more than you want, this is the low-key version of the same drive.

Wurstfest, November 6–15. Ten days at Landa Park in New Braunfels, and the biggest single event in this part of the corridor. Admission is free on weeknights and ticketed on the weekend days, and it costs less to buy online than at the gate. Gates open in the late afternoon on weeknights and late morning on the weekend days. The organisers push shuttles and rideshare hard over driving yourself, which tells you what parking is like. Prices and hours are the kind of thing that shifts year to year, so take them from wurstfest.com rather than from us.

Our day trips post covers what else is worth the drive in that direction, and how to string a Gruene afternoon together with the rest of a day.

Should you stay in San Marcos for Wurstfest?

Honest answer: maybe, and we'd rather say that than sell you something.

The case for it is availability. New Braunfels is a smaller lodging market absorbing ten days of a festival that draws from the whole region, and San Marcos is the next town up the interstate with a lot of rooms in it. If the dates you want are gone down there, they may well be open here. The drive is commonly quoted at twenty to twenty-five minutes, though we haven't clocked it ourselves on a Wurstfest Saturday and wouldn't want you planning a shuttle connection around our guess.

The case against it is that you'd be driving to and from the thing you came for, at night, in a crowd, in a town whose parking the organisers themselves discourage. If a New Braunfels room is available at a price you'll live with, take it.

What we can say plainly is that a stay here is a different trip rather than a compromised one: you get two outlet malls at walking distance, the river ten minutes off, and a festival that's a short drive rather than a step outside. Which of those matters more is yours to weigh.

The weather finally turns

Don't take September as a guide to anything. NOAA's 1991–2020 climate normals for this stretch of the corridor put September highs around 90°F. October drops to the low-to-mid 80s, and November settles around 72°F. That November number is the reason locals will tell you late fall is the best season here, and they're right.

Two practical consequences. October is the wettest of the three months, with about 4.25 inches of normal rainfall, so an October trip wants one indoor option held in reserve: the Wittliff Collections on the top floor of the Texas State library is free, and Wonder World's show cave doesn't care what the sky is doing. And the spread between a November morning and a November evening is wide enough to matter. A 3 p.m. kickoff on November 14 can start warm and finish cold. Bring the jacket you think you won't need.

The open-air outlet malls are the direct beneficiary. From our front door it's about six minutes on foot to San Marcos Premium Outlets and seven to Tanger, and in October and November that walk stops being a calculation about shade and just becomes a walk. Our fall guide goes deeper on how the season plays across the whole town.

Booking notes for the next two months

The dates that will be hardest to get a room on, in order: October 24 for Homecoming, then the Wurstfest weekends of November 6–8 and November 13–15, then the two remaining home Saturdays in November. October 15 is a Thursday game, which usually behaves differently from a Saturday one, though we'd still book it rather than assume.

The quiet windows are just as easy to name. The first weekend of October is an away game. Mid-week in October is about as calm as this town gets, with mild weather and uncrowded stores, and it's the window we'd pick if we were coming for the shopping rather than for a game. Late November tips into holiday shopping season at both malls, and it gets progressively busier from there.

One seasonal note on our end: the outdoor pool is exactly that, seasonal, so ask when you book if a swim matters to you. Everything else holds through the fall, including the free hot breakfast, the free parking your car can use as a base while you walk to the stores, and dogs being welcome. The full list is on our amenities page, and the rest of what's worth doing in town is on things to do.

Planning an October or November stay? Check availability. If your dates land on Homecoming weekend or on Wurstfest, do it now rather than in three weeks.