The Hatch Chile Festival runs over Labor Day weekend every year, in Hatch, New Mexico. The 2026 festival was Saturday 5 and Sunday 6 September. Labor Day 2027 falls on Monday 6 September, so expect the 2027 festival on the 4th and 5th, and check the festival's own site before you book anything.
Here's the more useful thing, and the reason most people land on this page in September: if you missed the festival, you haven't missed chile season. The festival is one weekend. The harvest runs for weeks on either side of it, and the roasters keep turning long after the carnival rides come down.
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Dates, and how to plan around them
The festival has been held over Labor Day weekend since it began in 1971, when it was a small gathering of local farmers marking the harvest. It now draws more than 30,000 visitors into a small farming town, which is the single most important fact for anybody planning to attend.
Only the confirmed line is a promise. The rest is just the calendar, and while the organizers have held to Labor Day weekend for decades, dates get posted closer to the time and things do occasionally move.
What actually happens there
There's a parade, there's live music, and there are carnival rides. Artisan and food vendors fill the grounds, and most of them are building something around green chile, from cheeseburgers to brisket to ice cream. Then there's the part everybody actually comes for, which is the roasters running all weekend long. That smell is the thing people describe for the rest of their lives!
It's a small town festival rather than a food expo, and that's both the appeal and the thing to plan around. Expect dust, heat, a long line for a roasted chile cheeseburger, and a parking situation that rewards getting there early.
One weekend of a much longer season
This is the part that costs people a trip they didn't need to make, or a trip they didn't make and should have.
Green chile harvest in New Mexico runs from roughly August into late September or early October, depending on the year and how the weather went, and the festival sits near the middle of that window rather than at the start or the end of it. Four things follow from that.
- You can buy and roast chile for weeks before and after the festival. Roadside roasters, farm stands and grocery store parking lots across the state run drums through the whole harvest, and you don't need a festival ticket to get a sack roasted.
- Festival weekend is also the busiest time to be in Hatch, so if your goal is chile rather than a parade, going a week on either side is a much calmer errand.
- Late season chile isn't worse, and it's often the opposite. Pods that ripen later have had more time on the plant, and some of the best red comes from the tail end of the window.
- The window closes for real. Once it's over it's over until next August, which is why New Mexicans put up a year's worth in one weekend.
If you want my honest advice, go to the festival once for the parade and the noise and the smell, and then do your actual buying the following Saturday when you can park. How much to put up is worth working out in advance either way, because a bushel and a sack are about fifteen pounds apart and most people either underbuy the first year or wildly overbuy the second.
If you are going
Bring a cooler, which is the one piece of advice nobody at a roaster will give you. Roasted chile is a cooked, moist, low acid vegetable, and NMSU Guide E-324 gives the hard limit: cooled below 40°F within two hours, then used or frozen within three days. Ice or cold packs in the trunk are what get you there. A hot bag riding home in a warm car has already spent a good chunk of that.
Go early, because parking and shade both run out and the roasters get busier through the day. And decide your heat level before you're standing there, since mild, medium, hot and extra hot are real differences and the same variety runs hotter in a dry year, because NMSU notes that field stress raises the heat of even a mild cultivar. Taste one before you commit to forty pounds.
Know what you're going to do with it when you get home, too, because a sack is a project. The roasting and freezing guide covers peeling, packing and the storage timelines, and figure on about three hours to process a full sack from roasted pods to sealed bags.
Then plan the food while you're at it. Green chile stew uses three cups for a pot of eight, which is the fastest way through a freezer, and green chile enchilada sauce is the other thing worth making in volume while the chile is fresh. After those it's enchiladas, tamales, burgers, omelets and a spoonful on your eggs.
If you missed it
There are two honest answers here, and which one applies depends on where you are.
If you're in New Mexico and it's still September or early October, go find a roaster, because the season is still open. That's the best chile you'll cook with all year, and nothing we sell replaces the experience of standing next to a propane drum while somebody fills a bag for you.
If the season has closed, or you're a thousand miles away, that's what we pack for, because there's no drum running anywhere in February.
- Frozen Hatch green chile arrives flame roasted, peeled and flash frozen in 5 lb bags, in 10 or 20 lb orders, in Mild, Hot or XXHot. It ships UPS air and has to be delivered in two days or less, and if it arrives warm to the touch we refund the entire order plus shipping, and you won't have to argue with anybody about it. We can only pack what the harvest gives us each year, so thank you for your understanding when a size runs out.
- 16 oz jars of flame roasted Hatch green chile in Medium or Hot, shelf stable, for the eleven months when nobody is roasting. Hatch chile, salt, garlic and lime juice.
- The red and green harvest blend, because Christmas isn't a compromise.
- In New Mexico, the store locator shows who carries us, and the retailer request form gets us onto a shelf that doesn't have us.
And if you want to understand what you're actually buying at that festival, what makes Hatch chile different covers the valley, the varieties and the reason there's less of it every year. The mistakes and substitutions guide is what to read before you cook with it, and the recipe archive is free.
Common questions
When is the Hatch Chile Festival?
Labor Day weekend, every year, in Hatch, New Mexico. The 2026 festival was 5 and 6 September. The 2027 festival is expected on 4 and 5 September, since Labor Day falls on Monday 6 September that year.
How long has the Hatch Chile Festival been running?
Since 1971. It started as a small gathering of local farmers celebrating the harvest and now draws more than 30,000 visitors.
What happens at the festival?
A parade, live music, carnival rides, artisan and food vendors, and chile roasting all weekend. It's a small town harvest festival rather than a food expo.
Did I miss chile season if I missed the festival?
You didn't. Green chile harvest runs from roughly August into late September or early October, the festival is one weekend near the middle of that window, and roasters run across the state for weeks on either side of it.
Can I buy chile to take home from the festival?
You can, and that's a large part of why people go. Bring a cooler with ice or cold packs, because roasted chile needs to get below 40°F within two hours of coming off the heat.
How much chile should I buy at the festival?
Work backward from how you eat. A sack of 30 to 40 pounds yields roughly 36 to 44 cups of cleaned chile, which is about a dozen pots of green chile stew and enough for most households for a year.
Is late season chile worse than early season?
It isn't, and it's often the opposite. Pods that ripen later have spent more time on the plant, and much of the best red chile comes from the end of the window.
Where can I get Hatch chile out of season?
Frozen or jarred. The harvest is a fixed window, so anything you eat in February was put up during it.
The short version
The festival runs over Labor Day weekend in Hatch and has done since 1971, and it now pulls in more than 30,000 people. 2026 was 5 and 6 September, and 2027 is expected on the 4th and 5th.
But it's one weekend of a harvest that runs from August into early October. If you missed the parade you haven't missed the chile, so go find a roaster while the window is open! When it closes, our frozen chile and jars are how you get to next August.