CNY Spring 2026: 20+ Real Events From Record Store Day to Crawfish Fest

By Matt Russo, Staff Reporter

Skip the generic event roundups. Here is what is actually scheduled across Central New York over the next six weeks, with dates, addresses, prices, and background pulled from official sources, venue history, and the organizations running each event. Most of it is affordable. Some of it is free. A lot of it is locally run.

This weekend: April 17 through April 19

Record Store Day at The Sound Garden. The independent record store at 310 W. Jefferson Street opens at 9 a.m. Saturday for the global Record Store Day event. Record Store Day 2026 carries roughly 350 exclusive and limited edition titles, one of the biggest lineups in the holiday’s 19 year history. Headliners include a Taylor Swift 7 inch on violet glitter vinyl, colored to match Elizabeth Taylor’s eyes, and Pink Floyd’s Live From the Los Angeles Sports Arena, April 26, 1975 in a pressing of 15,400 LPs in the U.S. and 30,000 worldwide. Tom Petty, Brandi Carlile, Bruce Springsteen, and a jazz slate curated by reissue producer Zev Feldman round out the slate. The Sound Garden opened in Syracuse in 1993 as the second location for owner Bryan Burkert, whose flagship Fells Point shop in Baltimore opened the same year. The store is skipping numbered tokens this year. Customers are admitted in line order, limited to one copy per release until the line clears. Contact: 315-473-4343.

Canal Clean Sweep. Saturday April 18, 9 to 10 a.m., 7585 North Court Street in Canastota. Open to ages 6 and up. Materials provided. Parks and Trails New York and the New York State Canal Corporation run the sweep across the 524 mile Erie Canal system and the 400 mile Canalway Trail. In 2025, more than 3,000 volunteers worked 180 plus cleanup sites statewide during the weekend. The Canastota site is one of several Madison County stops coordinated by the Great Swamp Conservancy.

Cavalcade of Cars. Saturday and Sunday at the NYS Fairgrounds Exposition Center, 581 State Fair Blvd. Hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $13.96 in advance, $15 at the door, $24.31 for a weekend pass. Kids 12 and under are free. The show moves this year into the 110,000 square foot Expo Center clear span floor, the largest indoor event space between Boston and Cleveland. Hot rods, customs, classics, race cars, lifted trucks, Jeeps, and motorcycles fill the hall. More than 35 awards will be handed out, including owner voted picks, alongside a swap meet, charity pinstriping, a pin up contest, and live music.

Syracuse Fashion Week Gala. Friday April 17, 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. at Mohegan Manor, 58 Oswego Street in Baldwinsville. Tickets are $55.05 general admission, $22.94 for children. Proceeds benefit the Food Bank of Central New York, which distributes more than 19 million pounds of food a year across 11 counties. Eleven local designers are featured on the runway, with past seasons showcasing labels including The Altered Eco, Projex214, Sunshadow Designs, and QueenRi’s Boutique.

Killer Queen at the Landmark Theatre. Thursday April 16 at 8 p.m., 362 S. Salina Street. Ticket prices range from $26.50 to $108.30. The Syracuse date opens a twelve week 2026 U.S. tour that runs through October 23 in Baton Rouge. Killer Queen first took the stage in 1993 at London University, the same venue where Queen itself played its earliest shows in 1972. Frontman Patrick Myers still performs the Freddie Mercury role after more than 30 years. Myers is backed by a four piece band hand picked to replicate Brian May, John Deacon, and Roger Taylor. The group secured a residency at London’s Strand Theatre, earned BBC coverage, and was the first tribute band to stage a show in London’s West End. Suggs from Madness presented them the Worldwide Best Tribute Band award at a Leicester Square ceremony. Queen guitarist Brian May has publicly praised the group on his own website.

Onondaga Lake Conservation Corps Earth Day Cleanup. Saturday April 18, 10 a.m. to noon. National Audubon Society staff and volunteers lead the seventh annual lakeshore cleanup. The Conservation Corps was founded in July 2012 by Honeywell in partnership with Montezuma Audubon Center and Onondaga Audubon, and is now an Audubon New York program. It has contributed to restoration of 44 acres of wetlands and more than 320,000 native plants across the watershed, and won a 2015 EPA Environmental Champion Award. Free. Registration on the Audubon New York site.

Deep dive: The Pinwheel Ball

Now in its 15th year, the Pinwheel Ball is the signature benefit for McMahon Ryan Child Advocacy Center, the Onondaga County nonprofit that coordinates the local response to child abuse investigations. The event lines up with National Child Abuse Prevention Month and the center’s Go Blue 4 Kids campaign. Friday’s black tie evening at The Oncenter opens with a cocktail reception, followed by dinner, entertainment by the band Atlas, silent and live auctions, and the signature Pinwheel Auction that closes the night. Don Lemp, founder of 100 Holes 4 Kids, previously received the Champion 4 Children award for raising more than $1 million for the center.

Deep dive: Defiant Requiem at Crouse Hinds

The Syracuse Orchestra performs The Defiant Requiem: Verdi at Terezin on Thursday April 16 at 7 p.m. at the Oncenter Crouse Hinds Concert Theater. Tickets run $18 to $36. The concert drama retells how Czech conductor Rafael Schachter, born May 25, 1905, assembled a choir of 150 prisoners inside the Terezin concentration camp in 1943 and taught them Verdi’s Requiem by rote from a single smuggled score accompanied only by a harmonium and later a single piano. Schachter led 16 performances inside the camp. Replacements were recruited at least three times as prisoners were shipped to Auschwitz. The performance staged on June 23, 1944 for an International Red Cross delegation and members of the Nazi command had 60 choir members remaining. Adolf Eichmann attended a later staging. Schachter was deported to Auschwitz in October 1944 and died on a death march in 1945, one month before Czechoslovakia was liberated.

Deep dive: The Landmark Theatre at 98

The Landmark opened February 18, 1928 as Loew’s State, designed by Thomas W. Lamb in the Classical Revival style. Loew’s assembled the 362 S. Salina Street site beginning March 29, 1926 at a cost of $1.9 million. Groundbreaking followed on March 15, 1927. Construction ran $1.4 million and involved more than 300 workers. The 1,400 pipe Wurlitzer organ went silent by 1954, was sold in 1964, and ended up at the Stanford Theatre in Palo Alto, California. The main lobby’s Tiffany chandelier, designed by Louis Tiffany in 1882 for Cornelius Vanderbilt’s mansion, was sold on June 4, 1975. The current Syracuse Area Landmark Theatre nonprofit, known as SALT, formed in 1975 and bought the theater in August 1977. EverGreene Architectural Arts finished its first major interior restoration in 2001. A second restoration pegged to the 2028 centennial is underway. The house currently seats 2,908.

More on the weekend calendar

Sebastian Maniscalco at Turning Stone. Saturday April 18, 8 p.m., Turning Stone Event Center, 5218 Patrick Road in Verona. Tickets $93.20 to $181.30. The It Ain’t Right Tour takes its name from Maniscalco’s Hulu special, filmed live at the United Center in Chicago and released November 21, 2025. He ranked as the number one highest grossing comedy tour in Billboard’s 2025 midyear Boxscore and finished the year as the third highest grossing comedy tour overall. He was also the only comedian on Pollstar’s Top 20 Global Concert Tours of 2025. Turning Stone Resort opened on July 20, 1993 as the first tribal casino and first land based casino in New York.

George Birge at Kegs Canalside. Saturday April 18, 6 p.m. at 7 N. Hamilton Street in Jordan. Tickets $34.02 to $63.02, pit upgrade $28.22, with Highway Home opening. Birge’s breakout single Mind on You first hit Billboard’s Country Airplay chart on August 13, 2022 at number 56 and stuck on the survey for more than a year. It debuted on the Hot 100 at number 88 on December 30, 2023, then peaked at number two on Country Airplay in early January 2024, held off the top spot by Nate Smith’s World on Fire.

Solar Viewing Party at Green Lakes State Park. Saturday April 18, 1 to 3 p.m. at 7900 Green Lakes Road, Fayetteville. Free. Park rangers set up filtered telescopes during the tail end of Solar Cycle 25, which NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center confirms peaked in October 2024 at a smoothed sunspot number of 161, the highest in more than two decades and well above the panel’s pre cycle forecast of 115. The 11 year solar cycle was first identified by German astronomer Heinrich Schwabe in 1843.

NYS Baroque Resurrexit. Friday April 17, 6:45 p.m. at Pebble Hill Presbyterian Church, 5299 Jamesville Road. Tickets $32, students and limited income $10, grades 3 through 12 free. The Ithaca based early music group was founded in 1988 by oboist Peter Hedrick and bassoonist Elizabeth Hedrick, and is now in its 37th concert season with a Syracuse and Ithaca subscription series. Lutenist Deborah Fox took over as artistic director in 2013. The program features 17th century Italian music for voice and cornetto.

Syracuse Orchestra, Let Freedom Ring. Saturday April 18 at 7 p.m., Sunday April 19 at 3 p.m. The 250th anniversary program for the Declaration of Independence runs nine freedom themed works from composers around the world, including the Nabucco Overture by Verdi, Hungarian Dances 1, 3, and 10 by Brahms, Sibelius’s Finlandia, Ives’s Variations on America, Copland’s Hoedown from Rodeo, Marquez’s Danzon No. 7, a movement of Three Spirituals by Adolphus Hailstork, Lutoslawski’s Little Suite, and Melody by the late Ukrainian composer Myroslav Skoryk.

Reel Stories at the Community Folk Art Center. Thursday through Saturday, April 16 through 18, 805 E. Genesee Street. Free. The Community Folk Art Center was founded in 1972 by Herbert T. Williams, then a professor in Syracuse University’s African American Studies Department, and has run Black Arts Speak film programming for decades. The festival opens Thursday at 6 p.m. with Space to Breathe, an Afrofuturist hybrid documentary set in a world without prisons or police. Saturday’s 11 a.m. double feature screens in the Center’s Black Box Theatre.

SASFest 2026 at Palace Theatre. Sunday April 19, noon to 9 p.m., 2384 James Street. Free with donations requested. The Syracuse Actors Studio, which formed in March 2024 when actor Joe Hollenbeck and collaborator Laura Stisser launched a free monthly workshop for local actors, runs its first festival of more than 20 CNY produced films. The night closes with The Bjorns, a homegrown awards ceremony named for longtime studio supporter Bjorn Woldbeck.

Improvised Dungeons and Dragons at The Song and Dance. Monday April 13, 8 p.m., 115 E. Jefferson Street. Tickets $15.66, 18 and up. The 3,700 square foot basement club at the Acropolis Center holds just under 400 people and opened in August 2023 a block from the Landmark.

Jodi Kantor at the Oncenter. Tuesday April 14, 7:30 p.m., Crouse Hinds Theater. Tickets $53.75. The New York Times investigative reporter and her partner Megan Twohey published the October 5, 2017 Weinstein investigation that triggered the modern MeToo movement. The Times shared the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service with Ronan Farrow of The New Yorker for the reporting, and the pair also took the George Polk Award and a slot on Time’s 100 most influential people of the year. Kantor headlines the Friends of the Central Library Author Series. She also ran a Q and A with Newhouse students earlier the same day.

Geek/Art CONfluence at SU Schine Student Center. Sunday April 19, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Goldstein Auditorium, 303 University Place. Free. Now in its seventh year, the comic convention was founded by SU visual arts associate professor Chris Wildrick as an outgrowth of Cripping the Comic Con and runs in partnership with SU’s CripCon initiative. Programming centers on disability awareness inside geek culture alongside panels, gaming, and cosplay.

Late April: Spring cleanups and community events

Downtown Syracuse Earth Day Cleanup. The Downtown Committee runs the city’s largest annual cleanup in the last week of April. Volunteers meet at designated spots downtown. The committee provides gloves, trash bags, green t-shirts, a breakfast snack, and a voucher for a downtown restaurant.

Spring Brush Pickup in Skaneateles. April 20 through May 31. The Town of Skaneateles Highway Department handles curbside brush collection across the town during the window. Call 315-685-3473 for specifics.

Cazenovia Winter Farmers Market closes. Saturday April 25, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Cazenovia Methodist Church. The final indoor market of the cold weather season.

Erie Canal Museum Locktender’s Garden volunteer day. Saturday April 19, 10 a.m. to noon, 318 Erie Boulevard East. The museum is seeking volunteers to prep the historic garden for summer.

May: Festival season opens

Crawfish Festival. Saturday May 2, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. at Clinton Square in downtown Syracuse. Free entry. The festival was launched in 2008 and runs as the primary fundraiser for Operation Northern Comfort, the Syracuse based nonprofit that deploys volunteers to disaster recovery sites across the country. Nearly 20 food vendors bring crawfish, shrimp, lobster, pulled pork, and pizza. Live music runs all day. A kid zone and local vendor marketplace round out the event. This is the traditional opener of downtown Syracuse festival season.

Cazenovia Farmers Market summer season opens. Saturday May 2 at Memorial Park on Albany Street. Market hours are 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. The outdoor season runs through October 24.

CNY Food Truck Festival. Friday May 16 and Saturday May 17 at the NYS Fairgrounds. The organizers call it the largest gathering of food trucks in Central New York history, with 50 plus trucks from Syracuse, Rochester, Ithaca, and beyond. Low cost sampling format.

RetroGameCon Jr. Saturday May 17 at ELITE Gaming Arena in Clinton Square. Single day spring convention focused on retro console and arcade gaming.

CNY Regional Market Thursday season. Thursdays from May through October, 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 2100 Park Street. The Thursday market runs alongside the year round Saturday and Sunday markets. SNAP and EBT accepted. Parking is free.

Farmers markets, verified

The CNY Regional Market on Park Street holds the region’s largest lineup. Saturday and Sunday hours are 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. year round. The Thursday outdoor market returns in May and runs through October. Dozens of farmers, butchers, cheese makers, flower growers, and prepared food vendors rotate through the stalls.

The Cazenovia Farmers Market at Memorial Park operates Saturdays 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. from May 2 through October 24. The Skaneateles Farmers Market runs Thursdays at 1 East Austin Street.

All three markets accept SNAP and EBT. The Cazenovia and CNY Regional markets both run double up produce programs through Farmers Market Federation of New York funding.

One more thing

If you want to rescue at least one weekend from the scroll, put the Crawfish Festival on May 2 and Record Store Day on April 18 on the calendar. Both are free to attend, both bring real crowds to real local businesses, and both have been running long enough in Syracuse that they feel like part of the city’s spring calendar rather than a marketing stunt.

Sources: This Is CNY event calendar, Visit Syracuse, Downtown Committee of Syracuse, Landmark Theatre, Sound Garden, Record Store Day, Parks and Trails New York, Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor, Audubon New York, McMahon Ryan Child Advocacy Center, Syracuse Orchestra, NYS Baroque, Billboard, Defiant Requiem Foundation, Oneida Indian Nation, Palace Theatre, Central New York Business Journal, Friends of the Central Library, NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center, Town of Cazenovia, Town of Skaneateles, CNY Regional Market Authority.