Gilroy Garlic Festival tickets go on sale May 31

Operators of the Gilroy Gardens and the Garlic Festival Association have been busy working together to finalize details for the 2025 Garlic Festival—which is returning this summer after a five-year absence. 

Tickets for the event will go on sale 12pm May 31on the association’s website. 

On May 15, the Gilroy Gardens Board of Directors announced it has entered into an agreement with the Gilroy Garlic Festival Association to use the South County Grove portion of the theme park to host the festival in July. 

“Gilroy Gardens is pleased to be able to assist the Gilroy Garlic Festival Association and support their efforts to bring back this iconic food festival,” states Dan Harney, Gilroy Gardens Chairman of the Board. “The Gilroy Garlic Festival Association and Gilroy Gardens share similar goals of working collaboratively with local businesses, nonprofits and other organizations to strengthen and showcase the Gilroy community.”

The festival association had announced in March that the three-day celebration of garlic would take place July 25-27. It will be the 46th year of the event and the first time the Garlic Festival has occurred since 2019, when a lone teenage gunman killed three people and wounded 17 others before killing himself in a shootout with police officers at Christmas Hill Park.

The South County Grove area of Gilroy Gardens is a separately gated special event space that features a large, shaded patio and ample lawn space that are ideal for hosting events. 

The 2025 Gilroy Garlic Festival will be a separately ticketed event, independently managed by the festival team, Gilroy Gardens said. Guests visiting Gilroy Gardens July 25-27 will not have access to the Gilroy Garlic Festival without purchasing separate tickets. 

The 2025 festival will also be on a much smaller scale—about 10% the size of the previous big crowds at Christmas Hill Park. This year’s festival will have a limited capacity of 3,000 tickets sold per day. 

Gilroy Garlic Festival Association President Paul Nadeau said last week the event’s entertainment team is in the process of curating a full live music lineup, and association staff are accepting and reviewing applications for vendors and assigning booth spaces. 

Fan favorite festival-adjacent events organized by the association are still on tap this year, with the Songwriters Music event scheduled for June 19 at Clos La Chance Winery; and the Golf Classic Tournament on June 20 at Gilroy Golf Course. 

Local producer Christopher Ranch Garlic for decades has been a major source of funds for the festival and philanthropy in the South Bay, and returns as a “premier sponsor” for the 2025 Gilroy Garlic Festival, Nadeau said.

Established to celebrate garlicky foods and the tight-knit Gilroy community, the Gilroy Garlic Festival over the years has attracted worldwide visitors every July and raised more than $12 million for schools and local charities.

Garlic festival attendance approached 100,000 during the three day event.

Efforts to bring back the festival began as early as 2020, but they were hindered by the pandemic. In 2021, the association attempted a smaller iteration at Gilroy Gardens, but post-shooting insurance costs proved too high to reopen the festival as a huge local event.

To purchase tickets for the 2025 Gilroy Garlic Festival (starting 12pm May 31) and for more information about the event, visit gilroygarlicfestival.com.