Over four decades, the Gilroy Garlic Festival became the city’s calling card — a point of pride celebrating a product that local farms grew by the bushel.
What began as a humble luncheon in 1978 became a phenomenon with an annual attendance of around 100,000. It attracted curious foodies, famous chefs and garlic fanatics from around the world — all while giving away hundreds of thousands of dollars every year, offering a lifeline to more than a hundred charities and nonprofit organizations throughout the city, and providing around a third of the funding for the Chamber of Commerce.
Then in 2019, tragedy struck when a gunman opened fire on the festival’s last day, wounding 17 people and killing three: 6-year-old Stephen Romero of San Jose; 13-year-old Keyla Salazar of San Jose; and 25-year-old Santa Cruz resident Trevor Irby. In the aftermath, the community lost its most cherished annual tradition.
But after six years, the Gilroy Garlic Festival will return in July, with tickets now waitlisted after selling out in just a few hours Saturday. While it will be a fraction of its former size, organizers promise a more intimate celebration that returns to the roots of the event and preserves the heart of the famed festival.
“It’s a kind of extended euphoria,” Paul Nadeau, president of the Garlic Festival Association, said of the event’s return. “We definitely wanted to regrow and rebuild the festival, so we wanted to start off small.”
The revived event will take place July 25-27, the association announced in March, on the five-acre South County Grove next to the Gilroy Gardens theme park.
The group had been in discussions with Gilroy Gardens for years about the possibility of hosting the festival there, and though they explored other locations, they hoped to keep the festival in Gilroy. The new location features tree-shaded greens and a pavilion that can seat 850, all of which is being spruced up in anticipation of the festival, said Nadeau.
Even so, the space has a limit of around 3,000 people; according to Nadeau, the organizers settled on the limit as part of their agreement with the park.
Former association president Cindy Fellows said the smaller event this year serves as a launching pad that returns the festival to its roots, when attendees numbered in the thousands rather than the tens of thousands.
“It’s all of the things that everyone has loved in the festival, and it’s just a little bit smaller,” said Fellows. “It’s gonna be a more intimate, safe environment.”
Many of the mainstays of previous festivals will return, with the full Gourmet Alley menu coming back, including shrimp scampi, calamari, pepper steak sandwiches, garlic bread, and iconic garlic ice cream. A beer garden, cocktails and a wine tent will also be available, and visitors can also enjoy daily cook-offs, culinary demos — including by festival favorites SakaBozzo, as well as dozens of vendors and a mainstage with a rotating series of artists playing everything from country to blues and R&B.
In response to concerns about safety, the festival has taken on new precautions that are now rather standard among festivals: secure gates, metal detecting wands at entrances, and an updated policy that only allows clear bags. The organizers have also collaborated with the Gilroy Police Department on a safety plan and hired a private security agency. Additionally, the property is more isolated and will be completely fenced in, said Nadeau.
Efforts to bring back the festival after the shooting began as early as 2020, but were hampered by COVID. In 2021, the Gilroy Garlic Festival Association, which runs the festival, explored a smaller iteration at Gilroy Gardens, but the required insurance liability had leaped from $6 million to $10 million after the shooting.
Since then, the festival has taken on a half-dozen smaller iterations, like a drive-through festival with live music in 2021, and a pasta dinner and songwriters concert last year, among others.
After a lawsuit attempting to hold the festival association liable for the shooting was dismissed in November 2023, many in the city and the Garlic Festival Association began in earnest to try to bring the festival back. In August, the city worked on new event guidelines meant to ease the permitting of events like the Garlic Festival. When the organizers applied for insurance again, it came at a fraction of what it was before – $4 million in liability.
“I think it’s very exciting that we’re able to do this again. It was very difficult five years ago to have to turn the lights off of a festival that had been going on for 40-plus years,” said Gilroy City Councilmember Tom Cline, who led the festival association in the years after the shooting. “The lights are gonna get turned on again, and that’s the best thing.”
Amid the excitement, however, is an acknowledgement that the festival is a fraction of its former self — even if tickets sell out, attendance will be less than a tenth of what it was in its peak years.
Mayor Greg Bozzo, who campaigned in part on the promise to bring back the Garlic Festival, admitted the limitations of the returning festival, stating that his message to those who were disappointed by the size of the festival is: “So am I.”
He noted that in the last five years, other food festivals have sprung up or grown around the Central Coast, meaning that even with its notoriety, the festival would have to fight to stand out in a more crowded field.
“Getting it back is a win, and somewhat of a political win, but that doesn’t matter to me; the thing that matters most to me is what this community gets out of the festival,” said Bozzo.
Still, he is not alone in his belief that the festival can grow to a sustainable size and continue giving back to the community at large.
“We can together rebuild this wonderful festival in our community that gave us so much — fundraising, pride, volunteerism, economic activity and a sense of community identity,” said Bozzo. “This is just the beginning of the new era. I am very optimistic.”
