Every generic fall roundup for a Bergen County town looks the same. Pumpkin patch, cider mill, corn maze. Drive twenty minutes, park in a field, come home with a gourd. That version of fall exists, but it is not the version that makes Leonia the town Leonia has been for a hundred years.
The fall that matters here runs on an arts spine. It starts at 130 Grand Avenue, at the Civil War Drill Hall that has housed the Players Guild since 1919. It crosses Broad Avenue at Beechwood, where the Erika and David Boyd Sculpture Garden anchors a program that has quietly placed more than fifty outdoor works around the borough. It ends at the western edge of town, on the Leonia side of Overpeck. And this year, most of it lands inside a three-weekend window a resident can actually plan around.
The Three-Weekend Window
The Players Guild's new season, the Bergen County Fall Harvest Festival, and the Guild's brand new October event stack into a rhythm the borough has not seen before. Two of the three anchors overlap on the same September weekend. The third closes out October.
| Weekend | Event | Where | Why It's New |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sept 18–20, 2026 | Bergen County Fall Harvest Festival | Overpeck County Park | 75+ exhibitors, carnival Friday evening through Sunday |
| Sept 18–27, 2026 | Players Guild opens 107th season with The Old Ladies Bar | Civil War Drill Hall, 130 Grand Ave | World-premiere play, co-produced with a new BIPOC-led NJ theatre company |
| Oct 23–25, 2026 | Drill Hall Spooktacular | Civil War Drill Hall | First-year event, launches PGL's new "Weekend Spotlight" series |
If a Leonia resident only picks one of the three weekends, the middle one is the concentrated one. The Guild's opening night and the Harvest Festival's carnival open on the same Friday.
What The Guild Is Actually Opening With
The Players Guild has announced its 107th consecutive season under the banner "New Voices. New Energy. Same Heart — Embracing the community in community theatre." That framing matters because the opener is not a comfort-food revival. It is a world premiere.
The Old Ladies Bar by Natasha Caroline Lowery Rivers, directed by PGL member T.S. Murphy, runs September 18 to September 27, 2026. The play is set in a legendary, family-run jazz bar and traces the legacy of historic musicians, deep family bonds, and the power within Black female culture over generations, co-produced with a new BIPOC-led theatre company based in Northern New Jersey. The Guild's home, the Civil War Drill Hall Theatre at 130 Grand Avenue, is one of New Jersey's most distinctive and historic performance spaces, and the room shapes how a world premiere lands. Sightlines are close. If you sit in the third row you are in the play.
For a resident who has walked past the Drill Hall for years without going in, this is the season opener to break the pattern on. Later slots on the calendar lean familiar. Who's Holiday! by Matthew Lombardo, directed by Bailey Dumlao, runs December 11–20, 2026 as an adults-only holiday cult favorite in rhyming couplets. That one sells out on premise alone. The September opener is the one that needs local audience.
The Overpeck Weekend That Overlaps It
The Bergen County Fall Harvest Festival lands on the same Friday the Guild opens. The three-day event is held in Overpeck Park with vendor pop-up days on Saturday and Sunday, September 19 and 20, 2026, plus a Friday evening opening on September 18 with rides and food vendors. Over 75 exhibitors sell arts and crafts, new items and collectibles from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., food trucks run alongside the exhibitor tent, and a full carnival operates all three days.
Practical notes for anyone walking or biking rather than driving:
- The Leonia entrance to Overpeck is at Fort Lee Road and Grand Avenue, roughly a ten-minute walk from most of the borough.
- The carnival and food trucks stay open until dusk after the 5 p.m. exhibitor close, so a resident who does the Guild's Friday preview or Saturday matinee can still catch the last of the festival on the way home.
- Vendor parking is offsite with shuttle buses; general parking fills fast on Saturday. Walking in from the Leonia side sidesteps the traffic on Challenger Road entirely.
The Harvest Festival is a Bergen County event, not a Leonia one. But the geography makes it a Leonia weekend in practice.
The New Halloween Event The Guild Just Added
The single most interesting item on the fall calendar is the one that did not exist last year. Under the "Embracing the community in community theatre" banner, the Guild is launching Weekend Spotlight events, and the first is the Drill Hall Spooktacular, October 23–25, 2026, directed by Ellyn Essig — a weekend of short haunting plays, spooky songs, and ghosts and ghouls, positioned as a way to get into the Halloween spirit.
Two things make this worth blocking off. Essig directed the Guild's most recent sold-out run, so the room already knows her hand. And the format, short plays plus music plus audience participation, is designed to give people who have never bought a Guild ticket a low-stakes reason to walk in. The 2026-27 season is explicitly built to keep the Drill Hall active with immersive events, musical entertainment, and comedy that invite audiences to participate, not just watch.
For families with elementary-school kids, it slots into Halloween week better than most towns' options. For anyone without kids, it is a good excuse to see the inside of the Drill Hall for the first time.
The Sculpture Piece Most Residents Walk Past Weekly
Fall in Leonia also means Sculpture for Leonia is fundraising. Established in 2008, the all-volunteer nonprofit maintains the Erika and David Boyd Sculpture Garden at Broad Avenue and Beechwood Place, where sculptures from artists around the world are displayed on loan. Its largest fundraiser, the Taste of Leonia, takes place in the fall and functions as a showcase of the area's cultures through food and wine, with attendees visiting local restaurants and spirit stores for Italian, Korean, Spanish, Chinese, and American samples, live music, and a silent auction in the Sculpture Garden.
The exhibition is centered in the Erika and David Boyd Sculpture Garden, but pieces are also mounted in prominent locations throughout town.
That is the point of it. Sculptures are placed in Wood Park, in front of the Leonia Senior Center at 305 Beechwood Place, and on Broad Avenue between Beechwood and Woodland Place. The Taste event is the one afternoon of the year the works come with commentary and food. If you have walked past the horse on Station Parkway a hundred times without knowing whose it is, this is the afternoon to fix that. Confirm the current date directly at sculptureforleonia.org, since the organization sets it year by year and does not always announce far in advance.
A Saturday In October, Assembled
For a resident who wants a template rather than a menu, here is how one Saturday inside the three-weekend window actually stacks:
- Morning coffee at Cafe de Lyon at 318 Broad Avenue. Walk the sculpture spine north from there. The garden at Broad and Beechwood is the anchor; the pieces around Wood Park and the Senior Center take another fifteen minutes.
- Late morning walk into Overpeck via the Fort Lee Road entrance. Do the vendor tent before it gets crowded around noon.
- Lunch back on Broad Avenue. Kaya Garden at 450 Broad and Dante's at 373 Broad both handle a walk-in Saturday well.
- Saturday matinee at the Drill Hall. Curtain is 2 p.m. on Sundays and 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday nights for most PGL runs, so a Saturday matinee is not always in the cards; check the specific weekend at leoniaplayers.org before committing.
- Carnival at Overpeck after dusk if the kids still have gas in the tank, or Nakahara Sushi at 299 Broad if they do not.
That is one Saturday. It runs entirely inside the borough or on its western edge. No car is required after the first coffee.
One Line For The Calendar
Leonia's fall does not read as a scatter of events. It reads as one arts spine that runs through three weekends, and the middle weekend is the one where the Guild's world premiere and the Overpeck festival share a Friday night. Put September 18 on the calendar first. The rest of the fall arranges itself around it.
For residents thinking further out about what living in a small, arts-anchored Bergen County borough looks like year over year, Scott Selleck has spent thirty-plus years watching how these calendars shape the way Leonia trades. When you're ready to talk about your own next move, schedule a consultation.
