We’re back for our 4th year, continuing to bring you great food, drinks, music, and art celebrating our favorite desert fruit.

As the festival has grown, we’ve had to grow as well and are excited to announce that this year we’ll be moving from our space in downtown Albuquerque to the beautiful Gutierrez Hubbell House with more space and facilities for our festival goers.

The festival will be in two parts this year. The first day on Saturday September 24th is for cooks, eaters, and anyone will a taste and interest in prickly pear and includes a vendor market, cooking and beverage demos, live music, art, games, and more.

This year will feature cooking demos from Chef Ray Naranjo, former Executive Chef of the Indian Pueblo Culture Center; Chef Justin Pioche owner of Pioche Food Group; and from members of the Agri-Cultura Network team. The day will also host a stocked vendor market with vendors selling all kinds of prickly pear foods, drinks, art, bath and body products,and other creations. We’ll also have a round table discussion and live podcast recording with our chef contributors moderated by Andi Murphy of the Toasted Sister
Podcast. And to round out the day we’ll have some amazing live musical performances.

The 2nd day of the festival on Sunday September 25th is dedicated to talks and workshops for farmers, ranchers, and gardeners on how and why to incorporate native, arid adapted plants like prickly pear into their systems. This will include a talk by University of Nevada
Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, John Cushman, whose research focuses on prickly pear (Opuntia) and other productive arid adapted crops.

Tickets are $6 for early bird (before September 1st);
$5 for students and children; and $8 general admission; day 2 registration is free but you still need to register to attend

You can see more photos from our previous years on our Gallery page and even watch some of the cooking demonstrations and performances from our 2020 virtual festival on our Youtube channel