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 with 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 award-winning Chef Freddie Bitsoie; Chef Craig Jones of Three Sisters Kitchen 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 food, drinks, art, bath and body products,and other creations.  

          Celebrating the artistic beauty of the prickly pear we'll also be holding a live art competition, with artists invited to create a prickly pear inspired work during the festival. And mini prickly pear paint parties throughout the day led by the Susan Gomez Arts, guiding people through creating a prickly pear designs (pre-registration is encouraged and you can register here) 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 from Side Montero, Midnight Stew, and the Ordinary Things.

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 workshop on identifying common species of prickly pear in New Mexico with former ABQ Biopark curator Dave Ferguson, using prickly pear and other native plants in your garden and landscaping, and 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 $7 for early bird (before September 1st);
$6 for students and children; and $10 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