What actually changes at Donnelly Park on the last Saturday of September, when the same lawn that hosts a blueberry pie contest in April and a plant sale in November suddenly fills with a live band playing salsa and a crowd voting on their favorite Frida Kahlo?
The answer is the Mount Dora Viva La Frida Festival, and this year marks its fourth run: Saturday, September 26, 2026, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., free to attend. If you live in Lakes of Mount Dora, it's a short drive to a festival built on a premise most of Donnelly Park's other annual events don't share. Most of them ask you to walk and shop. This one asks you to show up dressed.
From ticketed debut to free admission in three years
The festival started smaller and more formal than it runs today. Its inaugural edition, held September 30, 2023, charged ten dollars in advance or fifteen at the door, with a hundred-dollar VIP tier that bought a private catered area and a tequila tasting. That's a normal way to launch an untested event: cover costs, gauge turnout, see if the idea holds.
It held. By its third year in 2025, admission had dropped to free, and it's stayed free for the fourth run in 2026. That shift matters if you tried the festival once in its early days and filed it away as a ticketed night out. It isn't one anymore. The Mount Dora Center for the Arts, the nonprofit that produces the event, has apparently decided the festival earns its keep through vendor fees and sponsorships rather than a gate charge, which is the same funding model that supports its better-known February event, the Mount Dora Arts Festival, marking its 51st year in 2026.
Why this Donnelly Park weekend doesn't feel like the others
Donnelly Park hosts a handful of single-day festivals every year, and most of them share a shape: vendors line the perimeter, you walk a loop, you buy something. The Mount Dora Plant and Garden Fair works that way. So does the Blueberry Festival each spring, where the main event is buying berries and blueberry products straight from the farms that grew them.
Viva La Frida runs differently because it's built around a stage, not a row of booths. The festival's own listings describe a single stage with live entertainment running the full day, bands moving from rock to salsa, and a costume contest where guests dress in Frida-inspired outfits and flower crowns and the crowd votes on a favorite. Even the vendors, more than fifty of them in recent years selling original art and handmade goods, share the grounds with a program that has somewhere for you to look besides a table.
Janet Gamache, the Mount Dora Center for the Arts' executive director, has described the event's intent plainly: it's meant to "celebrate the rich and diverse cultures of our Hispanic and Latino friends and neighbors." That framing shows up in the day's structure. Past editions have brought in community outreach groups offering services and information for Latino families alongside the entertainment, which is a different civic function than a craft fair or plant sale is built to serve.
What's actually on the ground
Food has leaned into the theme rather than defaulting to generic festival fare. Past years have brought empanadas, ceviche, arepas, and paella, with Cuban restaurant Las Palmas among the event's early sponsors. Mojitos, Spanish beer, and specialty cocktails have been available on site, and in 2025 an Orlando distiller, Caribbean Moonshine, offered free rum tastings to adult guests. In past years, a paid VIP tier has bought a private catered area and a tequila tasting, so it's worth checking the event page closer to the date to see whether that tier returns for 2026.
Kids get their own layer too, with a free art zone that's stayed part of the lineup since the festival's early years.
The gallery two blocks over
The Mount Dora Center for the Arts runs a gallery on Fifth Avenue a short walk from Donnelly Park, and in 2025 it paired the festival with a themed show called "The Spirit of Frida," featuring local artists' work built around the same inspiration driving the costume contest at the park. If you're already downtown for the festival, it's worth checking whether this year's edition includes a similar exhibit. The gallery routinely rotates shows tied to the Center's programming, so a walk over costs you little beyond ten minutes.
What to actually plan around
A few practical notes if you're building your Saturday around this one:
- The festival runs 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. at Donnelly Park, 530 N. Donnelly St.
- Admission has been free for the past two years running, a change from the ticketed debut in 2023.
- Parking downtown fills up on festival Saturdays. In at least one recent year, the city ran free shuttle service from lots around town rather than relying on street parking near the park itself, so it's worth checking the city's event calendar for shuttle details before you drive in.
- The costume contest and stage entertainment run all day, so there isn't a single "peak hour" the way there might be at a market-style event. Arriving midday still gets you the full program.
Why this is worth knowing if you already live here
None of this changes anything about property values or market timing, and that's the point. If you already own a home in Lakes of Mount Dora, the useful fact isn't that Mount Dora hosts festivals. It's that Donnelly Park's calendar has range: a blueberry weekend built around produce, a plant fair built around browsing, and now a fourth-year event built around a stage, a costume contest, and a cuisine that most of the town's other festivals don't serve. Knowing which kind of Saturday you're walking into is the difference between showing up for ten minutes and staying for the whole afternoon.
If you're weighing a move to Mount Dora and want a clearer read on what daily life here actually looks like, from the festival calendar to what a lakefront or 55+ home in Lakes of Mount Dora will actually cost you, Scott McFadden is a straightforward call away. Let's Connect.
