On the 2026 Austin Studio Tour's participant list, location 18 runs for a full column. Aileen Chen, Alex Saxon, Ann Flemings, Art From the Streets, Artists Screen Printing Co-Op, Austin Clay Arts, Caroline Walker, Cheryl Finfrock, and more, all at one address that also lists Almost Real Things Gallery at Canopy. Most locations on that list cover one artist or a handful. Location 18 is a whole building.
That column is the clearest picture of how East Austin works on the tour this year. There's no East weekend anymore. The East side shows up as a set of addresses, and a growing share of its art sits in shared buildings that host many artists at once. The small one-room spaces that used to fill in the map have had a rough year.
The East weekend ended in 2025, and it isn't coming back this year
The tour began as an East Austin event in 2003 and later grew into a citywide one, KUT reported when Big Medium, the nonprofit that ran it for more than two decades, announced in February 2025 that it was closing. Its board said major sponsors, including the City of Austin, had "redirected their funding priorities."
Almost Real Things, an artist-run collective, took over. Its founders scrapped the old East and West split and made both weekends citywide, KUT reported, to make the tour more accessible and easier to get around. The 2026 edition keeps that format.
| 2025 | 2026 | |
|---|---|---|
| Producer | Almost Real Things, first year | Almost Real Things, second year |
| Dates | Nov. 8–9 and 15–16 | Nov. 14–15 and 21–22, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily |
| Weekend format | Both weekends citywide | Both weekends citywide |
| Scale | 722 artists at 319 locations, per the Austin Chronicle | 815+ artists and art groups at 300-plus locations, per Almost Real Things |
| Cost | Free | Free |
The organizers' own recap of 2025 counts 723 participants across 317 locations, a hair off the Chronicle's figures. Either way, the tour that started on the East side now runs everywhere at once. Your neighborhood no longer gets a weekend of its own, so your Saturday competes with the whole city's.
Numbered by address, the East side becomes clusters
The 2026 tour adds a second change. It's now organized and numbered by physical location, 1 through 309, with each number tied to a single address. Hosts that gather several artists under one roof appear first in the listings. In 2025 you planned around artists. In 2026 you plan around buildings, and on the East side those buildings fall into a few clear corridors.
| Corridor | Stops (location number, address as listed) |
|---|---|
| Springdale and points east | Canopy, 18, 916 Springdale Rd. · Art For The People Gallery and Clover + Maven, 33, 1023 Springdale Rd., Bldgs. 2A and 6D · Bolm Studios, 112, 5305 Bolm Rd., Bays 8–10 |
| East Fifth and East Cesar Chavez | Artful Living., 34, 3415 E. 5th St. · Factory on 5th, 40, 3409 E. 5th St. · Splinter Group, 117, 3508 E. Cesar Chavez St. · Mural Supply Co., 101, 2324 E. Cesar Chavez St., Downstairs · East Austin Alleyway Art Crawl, 73, 1717 E. Cesar Chavez St. · Boggy Creek Farm Art Market, 58, 3414 Lyons Rd. |
| Closer to I-35 | Monica's Porch, 11, 1621 E. 6th St. · WURSTA & the wrst gallery, 14, 1021 E. 7th St. · Haus Obscura, 42, 2511 E. 6th St. · Austin Liberation Center, 16, 501 Pedernales St. · Native American Cultural Center, 19, 84 Robert T. Martinez Jr. St. · Tillery Springs, 31, 638 Tillery St. · TAYO NA, 71, 1156 Hargrave St. · Zeros Art Collective Vendor Market, 93, 4707 Gonzales St. |
| Rosewood, East 12th and Manor | Quimera Gallery, 44, 1815 Rosewood Ave. · Slowpoke Tattoo @Camp East, 12, 2905 E. 12th St. · Pink Box Studios, 90, 1613 J.J. Seabrook Dr. · Raasin in the Sun Studios, 29, 3515 Manor Rd. |
Flatbed Member Market '26 is location 6 and Springdale General is listed at location 33. Check the official locations map for their details before you go.
The numbers jump around, so don't follow them in order. Pick a corridor and work through it.
Springdale is the anchor, and the kick-off is Nov. 6
If one stretch of road carries the East side this year, it's Springdale. A week before the first tour weekend, the kick-off celebration takes place at Almost Real Things Gallery at Canopy, 916 Springdale Rd., Building 2, No. 101, on Friday, Nov. 6, from 6:30 to 10 p.m. The kick-off is all ages and ticketed. It includes a 2-inch-by-4-inch group exhibition with more than 200 artists, the 2026 Guidebook, live music from The Dave Scher Trio, Gina Chavez and Jennifer Foster, and food and coffee from Sa–Tén. Children under 13 get in free. The tour weekends themselves cost nothing. Almost Real Things says it's fundraising to keep them that way.
The kick-off is the best night to use the printed guidebook, which the producers describe as a year-round directory. Mark your Springdale stops while you're standing on Springdale. Canopy and 1023 Springdale, where Art For The People Gallery and Clover + Maven sit in separate buildings of the same complex, are just down the road from each other. Bolm Studios, farther east off Bolm Road, takes up three bays at one address.
KUT's 2025 tour coverage featured Sage Studio as one of the galleries at the Canopy stop. Shared complexes like these are the East side's most dependable tour stops. One parking spot gets you a building full of artists.
Why the shared buildings matter more this year
The past 18 months of East Austin arts news explain why so much of the tour's weight now rests on multi-artist addresses. Here's what changed in that time, from oldest to newest.
- Austin Creative Alliance left the East side. The alliance lost its longtime East Austin home in May 2025 after the building sold, and the new owner raised rents to levels its CEO called "unsustainable," displacing nine artists and three nonprofits, KUT reported. The group moved downtown to Central Christian Church at 11th and Guadalupe, where its 13 studios rent for around $3 per square foot per month with utilities included.
- Collection Rert said goodbye. The nonprofit art space on Rogers Avenue opened in 2017 and hosted more than 70 shows. It held its farewell in May 2026 after the property was put up for sale, KUT reported.
- Raasin in the Sun opened its first studio. The arts nonprofit built its first brick-and-mortar space in the courtyard of the Seabrook Square affordable-housing development near Mueller, according to KUT. It plans workshops in woodworking, collage-making, cooking and watercolor, and local artists can sell their work there. In August, the group said it planned a grand opening this fall. The tour's host directory lists Raasin in the Sun Studios at 3515 Manor Rd., location 29.
- Ostillo Art Foundation opened in a Rosewood warehouse. The foundation opened in September 2026 at 2600 Rosewood Ave. with a gallery, library and performance space, and admission is free, KUT reported. Its first exhibition, Masquerade, opens with a Glenn Ligon painting and includes artists of eight nationalities. The foundation is also the new permanent home of the Eastside Kings Festival, the late-October concert series celebrating African American blues, jazz and gospel.
A gallery in a rented house and a nonprofit in a building that changed hands both lost their East Austin rooms. The new spaces opened in a converted warehouse and in the courtyard of a housing development, both buildings with an institution behind them. Almost Real Things co-founder Natalie Earhart told the Austin Chronicle last year that "affordable space for art in general is hard in Austin." That's why the tour expanded its host model, so artists without their own venue could still take part. The 2026 location numbering puts that host model at the center of the map.
One East side afternoon, start to finish
A tour Saturday runs from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and that goes fast. Here's one way to cover the East side in a day.
- Start on Springdale. Canopy at location 18 and 1023 Springdale at location 33 put the most artists within the shortest distance.
- Drop south to East Fifth and East Cesar Chavez. Factory on 5th and Artful Living. are almost next door to each other at 3409 and 3415 E. 5th. Splinter Group is around the corner at 3508 E. Cesar Chavez, and Boggy Creek Farm Art Market is at 3414 Lyons Rd.
- Work west toward I-35. Mural Supply Co., the East Austin Alleyway Art Crawl, Haus Obscura, Monica's Porch and WURSTA & the wrst gallery line the corridors closer to downtown.
- Save Rosewood and Manor for the second weekend. Quimera Gallery, Slowpoke Tattoo @Camp East, Pink Box Studios and Raasin in the Sun Studios make a full afternoon on their own. Ostillo, at 2600 Rosewood Ave., isn't on the tour's list of stops and charges no admission, so you can visit it on a different day.
Both weekends cover the whole city, but artists choose which days they open. Check each stop's listing on the official locations page before you head out, and use its accessibility filters, which show details like ADA parking and accessible restrooms for each space.
I'm the person who stops the car over a good screen-printed poster and an even better steel-framed window, so I'll be on Springdale on Nov. 14. If you want to talk about the East side's buildings, the ones with art inside and the ones you might want to live in, Alli Heller is always up for that conversation. Let's Connect.
