If you've lived in Mt. Lebanon long enough to have a favorite spot to park during the Artists' Market, you probably have a mental shortcut for fall in Uptown: one weekend in late September, Academy Lot full of easels, Rollier's parking lot full of smoke, done. Circle the date, show up, eat well, buy a print you didn't know you needed.
That shortcut doesn't work this year. The Mt. Lebanon Partnership pulled the two headline events apart, and if you only mark one Saturday on the calendar, you're going to miss most of what's actually happening on Washington Road this fall.
One Weekend Used to Cover It All
Last September, the Partnership ran what it called Fall Festival Weekend on September 27 and 28: the Artists' Market in the Academy Lot both days, the Uptown Market's regular Saturday morning run, a Plein Air Kids' Paint Out at Clearview Common, Curbside Concerts threaded through the shopping blocks, and Pittsburgh EggFest closing out Sunday afternoon in Rollier's lot. Once the sun went down that Saturday, the sidewalks even lit up with colorWALK, a projected installation of butterflies and flowers that the Partnership ran in partnership with the municipality. It was, by design, a single two-day unit. You could plan one outing and catch nearly everything Uptown had going on.
That single-unit version of the weekend is the one most residents remember, and it's the one that no longer exists.
The Calendar Split
According to the Mt. Lebanon Partnership's own event listing, the 2026 Artists' Market runs September 26 and 27, a two-day juried fine arts festival with more than 65 artists exhibiting in the Academy Lot, the same footprint behind The Saloon and across from Rollier Hardware that regulars already know. That part of the tradition is intact. What's gone is the automatic pairing with EggFest on the Sunday.
Pittsburgh EggFest now has its own date entirely: October 4, a Sunday running from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., a full week after the Artists' Market wraps. Rollier's is still hosting, but the event isn't sharing a weekend with the art booths anymore. If you built your fall around one trip to Uptown, you now need two, spaced about a week apart.
Why EggFest Needed Its Own Day
The Big Green Egg event listing calls this Rollier's third annual Pittsburgh EggFest, and the language on it is not subtle: "our biggest EGGfest yet," with more than 10 grill chefs cooking this time around. A cookout that's grown enough to need double-digit chefs on Big Green Eggs is a cookout that's outgrowing a shared afternoon slot squeezed between a two-day art fair and Sunday foot traffic. Splitting the events gives EggFest its own parking lot, its own crowd, and its own three-hour window without competing for attention against 65 artist booths a block away.
That's a small scheduling decision with a practical consequence for anyone living nearby: the smoke and the smell that used to show up as a Sunday-afternoon bonus during Artists' Market weekend is now the entire point of a separate trip to Rollier's, a week later.
The Market Season Got Longer, Too
The Uptown Market, the Saturday morning farmers market that runs on Washington Road, isn't wrapping up when the leaves start turning this year either. Coverage from The Lebo Beat notes the market runs from late May through October 24, later into the fall than its usual window, a stretch the outlet attributes to how well the season has been received. Vendor Ben Carozza, who bakes focaccia at the market, put it simply:
"People come here just for me sometimes."
Partnership representative Dorene Ciletti, who staffs the market's information booth most weeks, described community response the same way: "Overall, the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive." The season now runs later into the fall than residents may be used to, which means it overlaps with both the Artists' Market weekend and EggFest instead of finishing before either one starts.
Put the three dates together and the picture is less "one big weekend" and more "a stretch of Saturdays that keeps going." Uptown Market runs every Saturday morning through October 24. The Artists' Market takes over the Academy Lot September 26 and 27. EggFest claims Rollier's lot on its own October 4. None of these dates require each other anymore, and none of them require you to do everything in a single trip.
A New Storefront at the Top of the Strip
While the calendar was rearranging itself, one of Uptown's shops changed address too. Golden Beetle, the home goods and gift shop Meredith Broussard opened on Central Square in 2023, has a new home at 733 Washington Road. That address matters more than it sounds: the municipality's own business district page defines Uptown's commercial core as the stretch of Washington Road between 600 and 733, which puts Golden Beetle's new storefront right at the edge of that boundary, the last stop before the business district gives way to residential streets.
If you're building a fall Saturday around the market and a walk through Uptown, that's a useful data point. The loop that used to end somewhere in the middle of the block now has a reason to stretch all the way to the top of it.
Three Saturdays, Not One
Here's what the fall actually looks like this year if you want to catch it all, laid out the way it will hit your calendar rather than the way it used to:
- Saturday, September 26 and Sunday, September 27: Artists' Market in the Academy Lot, 65-plus juried artists, along with the regular Uptown Market Saturday morning
- Saturdays through October 24: Uptown Market continues its weekly run on Washington Road
- Sunday, October 4: Pittsburgh EggFest at Rollier's, its third year running and its largest yet with more than 10 grill chefs
None of these dates cancel each other out, and none of them requires the others. But if you were planning your fall around a single trip Uptown the way you might have last year, this is the year to check the actual dates instead of relying on memory. The weekend you remember split into three Saturdays, and the shop you used to walk past on the way to the art booths has a new address worth building into the route.
If you're weighing whether Mt. Lebanon's day-to-day rhythm, not just its market data, fits the way you want to live, Theresa Doran has been walking these same Uptown blocks since 2005 and is glad to talk through what a season here actually feels like. Schedule a free consultation whenever you're ready for that conversation.
