Hilloween Is Back on Capitol Hill, and This Year the Day Runs Uphill
October 22, 2026
October 22, 2026
At 11 a.m. on Saturday, October 31, the first candy of Capitol Hill's Halloween goes out at Chophouse Row in Pike/Pine. Seven and a half hours later, the last businesses on 15th Avenue East are closing out their trick-or-treat window, a short walk from the residential blocks around Volunteer Park. In between, a free carnival fills AIDS Memorial Plaza at Broadway and Denny, and a costume parade heads down Broadway.
Hilloween returns this year for the first time in three years, according to CHS Capitol Hill Seattle. This one is built as a sequence. Each part of the neighborhood gets its own time slot, and the slots hand off from one to the next, so one family can work its way from the bottom of the Hill to the top over a single afternoon.
The official Hilloween site and the 15th Avenue East BIA publish separate schedules. Put together, they read as one path heading north and uphill:
The route is intentional. CHS lays out the same plan, suggesting that candy collectors start in Pike/Pine early in the day, wind through Broadway, then head up to 15th before topping off their buckets in the hot zone. The schedules fit that plan. The Pike/Pine window closes exactly when the carnival opens, and the Broadway and 15th windows start together, so families can pick one or split up.
If you're starting in Pike/Pine with a stroller, the 12th Avenue and East Pike intersection reopened to traffic on September 25 after a long sewer repair. The city scheduled sidewalk and curb-ramp restoration to run through late October, with storefront access kept open throughout, CHS reported.
The wider footprint comes from a change in who runs the event. According to CHS, the Broadway BIA canceled Hilloween in 2024 for lack of funding, and it was canceled again in 2025. That fall, District 3 Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth championed a budget amendment moving $5,000 into the Department of Neighborhoods matching fund program to support annual Halloween events for children. Organizing then moved to Egan Orion and PrideFest. Orion told CHS the celebration was being planned to reach beyond Broadway into Pike/Pine, with a central carnival as well.
Then there's the calendar. Halloween lands on a Saturday this year, and the organizers note that 2026 is Hilloween's first time on Halloween proper. A Saturday Halloween leaves room for a 7.5-hour program that starts before lunch. A weeknight Halloween would have squeezed everything into the hours after school.
The sponsor list on the event site follows the route too. It names Connection on Broadway, the Broadway BIA, PrideFest, Pike Pine Social, Hunters Capital and CHS. That covers Broadway's business district and Pike/Pine's nightlife and property interests, which are the two areas the daytime program connects.
The carnival sits in the middle of the day, and the plaza schedule is tight enough to plan around. Donnatella Howe hosts.
| Time | On the plaza |
|---|---|
| 1:00 to 1:45 p.m. | Aleksa Manila's drag spooky storytime |
| 1:45 to 2:15 p.m. | Pet costume contest registration |
| 2:15 to 2:45 p.m. | Pet costume contest |
| 3:00 to 3:45 p.m. | Joe Black, magician |
| 3:45 to 4:00 p.m. | Chaotic Noise Marching Corps |
| 4:00 p.m. | Costume parade down Broadway |
The pet contest is a second chance for any dog that missed the Hill's first costume event. The Volunteer Park Trust held its Halloween Pet Parade on Sunday, October 4, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. in Volunteer Park, with costumes, music, food trucks and prizes. On Saturday, registration closes at 2:15, so dog owners coming up from Pike/Pine have a little over an hour after the trick-or-treat window ends to get to Broadway and Denny.
The marching corps finishes right as the parade starts, and the parade heads down Broadway at the same moment Broadway's trick-or-treat window opens. The parade route is the first stretch of the evening's candy run.
This year's newest piece is the 15th Avenue East extension. Its merchants are working together on a trick-or-treat night with candy, free jack-o'-lantern buckets and maps at participating businesses, according to CHS. The BIA's Halloween page lists the window as 4 to 6:30 p.m. It also says businesses will keep their normal hours, so some won't be open for the full window.
The participant list covers most of what a regular 15th Avenue East errand run would include:
Pizza and Thai counters on that list make dinner easy to fit into the walk before the last leg. That leg is the residential hot zone, which CHS describes as the popular trick-or-treat area around 16th and 17th Avenues East, a short walk from 15th. CHS's 2025 coverage centered the zone on 16th Avenue East and East Aloha. No 2026 closure plan for those blocks has been published, so plan on sharing the streets with cars.
The route passes several addresses that are changing this season, and the changes continue past Saturday night.
On North Broadway, Altura has already moved, as MyNorthwest reported on October 16. Chef and owner Nathan Lockwood combined his two Capitol Hill restaurants by moving Altura across Broadway into the 7,500-square-foot space of its sister restaurant, Carrello, timed to Altura's 15th year. Altura opened on North Broadway in October 2011. "I'm looking forward to not running back and forth across Broadway every night," Lockwood said in the announcement CHS reported in August.
The restaurant went from 617 Broadway E to 622 Broadway E. Carrello's own site now lists both restaurants under the Altura name at 622 Broadway East. Altura's tasting menu is served in the dining room and Carrello's menu in the Garden & Lounge, and Carrello-menu bookings from October 15 on go through Altura's Lounge or Garden. That's useful if you're looking for an adult dinner after the kids' candy has been counted.
Back in Pike/Pine, near where Saturday's route begins, the holidays are next. The Capitol Hill Christmas Dive Bar, the seasonal pop-up from Joey Burgess and Murf Hall, will take over the former Havana space at 1010 E Pike this year, CHS reported. Havana closed this summer after 20 years of Pike/Pine nightlife. The pop-up usually debuts around Thanksgiving. No 2026 opening date has been announced yet, and Burgess and Hall post updates on the @christmasdivebar Instagram account. The same report notes that the Capitol Hill Glossier store, in the same building, is set to close permanently in January.
So Saturday's route covers more than Halloween. It goes past a restaurant that just finished moving, a nightclub space about to become a Christmas bar, and a storefront set to close in January.
Design-minded homeowners know a neighborhood shows itself best on days like this, when the sidewalks are full from Pike/Pine to 15th. If you're starting to think about how your own Capitol Hill home would present on this street, or what's changing on your block, Lizanne Wicklund would be glad to walk it with you. Work With Lizanne.
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