If you walked past El Camino Real and Third Street on a Thursday evening in July, you'd have found a beer and wine garden, a rotating cocktail special, live music, and a farmers market packed into three and a half hours. Walk the same corner this Thursday and you'll find regular Old Town foot traffic and not much else. The Sunset Market ran on the third Thursday of each month from May through September, and its final 2026 date landed on September 17. That leaves a real gap in the weekly rhythm here, but it's the wrong gap to worry about. Old Town Tustin doesn't have one farmers market that just went dark for the season. It has three different things that all get called "the farmers market," running on three different days, for three different reasons, and only one of them just ended.
Sorting out which is which matters if you actually live near here and plan your week around what's open, because the three markets serve different purposes and none of them replace each other.
Three Markets, Three Jobs
The one most people mean when they say "Old Town's farmers market" is the OCFB Certified Farmers' Market at 245 El Camino Real, right at Third Street. It runs every Wednesday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., rain or shine, all year. This is the workhorse: certified growers, produce stalls, the tamale stand regulars swear by, a fresh fish vendor that locals point to as a rare find in this part of Orange County. It's not a special event. It's a Wednesday.
A mile or so away, The District at Tustin Legacy runs its own Sunday farmers market at 2411 Park Avenue, weekly from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. This one is operated by Farm and Craft Market, a separate outfit that markets itself as bringing an expanded lineup of specialty items, seasonal mushrooms and varied eggs among them, to the city. It has its own vendor mix and its own operator, separate from the Old Town program.
Then there's the one that just wrapped for the year. The Sunset Market ran monthly, third Thursdays only, May through September, back at El Camino Real and Third, but in the evening: 5 to 8:30 p.m., with a beer and wine garden, a featured cocktail of the month, live music, and food trucks layered on top of the same farmers market format. It's the closest thing Old Town has to a standing block party, and its final two 2026 dates were August 20 and September 17.
| Market | Day / Time | Location | Run By |
|---|---|---|---|
| OCFB Certified Farmers' Market | Every Wednesday, 9 a.m.–1 p.m. | 245 El Camino Real | Orange County Farm Bureau |
| The District Farmers Market | Every Sunday, 9 a.m.–1 p.m. | 2411 Park Ave, Tustin Legacy | Farm and Craft Market |
| Sunset Market | Third Thursdays, May–Sept, 5–8:30 p.m. | El Camino Real & Third St | City of Tustin |
Lay them out next to each other and the pattern is obvious: the Wednesday market and the Sunset Market both sit in Old Town proper and share the same stretch of El Camino Real. The Sunday market belongs to Tustin Legacy and is run by Farm and Camp Market. Two of the three are Old Town's own, and the third is Tustin Legacy's.
What's Actually Filling the Gap
The Sunset Market's end for the season doesn't leave Old Town's calendar empty. It leaves it different. The next big date on Old Town's own calendar isn't a market at all. It's the Honda-Ya Charity Festival, also billed as a Japanese Festival, taking over 556 El Camino Real on Sunday, October 4, starting at 11 a.m.
That address matters. It's Honda-Ya, the izakaya that's been part of Old Town's dinner rotation long enough to earn a reputation as a place that still feels fresh despite being a fixture, known for wooden booths, paper lanterns, and a menu built around yakitori skewers, ramen, udon, sashimi and shared bento. A restaurant hosting its own charity festival draws on the businesses around it, and it only works if the surrounding blocks can support the crowd.
They can now, in a way they couldn't a few years ago. Centro Storico opened nearby with a trattoria setup, brick walls, warm lighting, and a menu built around house pastas, risottos and pizza, the kind of place built for a slow Friday dinner rather than a quick stop. Down the street, GEN brought in all-you-can-eat Korean barbecue with sleek blue lighting and grills built into every table, a format that needs a group and a couple of hours to spare. Neither of those openings happened on the same day, and neither was tied to a single ribbon-cutting you'd find in a press release. They accumulated, one restaurant at a time, until Old Town had enough of a dinner scene to host a Sunday festival built around one of its own restaurants.
Compare that to what's landing at The District over the same stretch. Learn & Grow, a Parenting OC event aimed at families with young kids, took over the shopping center on September 12. The Glow Festival, an open-air beauty and wellness market at 2437 Park Avenue, followed on September 19, organized by Svn Social, an operator that runs comparable pop-ups across Orange County rather than a Tustin-specific outfit. Both are worth knowing about if they fit your household, and The District's Sunday farmers market keeps running as the low-effort default for starting a weekend. Together they give The District a steady run of family, wellness and market programming, while Old Town's next date comes from a restaurant on El Camino Real.
Reading the Calendar Correctly
The practical version of this: if your Thursday evenings used to revolve around the Sunset Market, that slot is open until next May, when the city's program typically restarts for the season. If you want a standing weekly errand, the Wednesday certified market at 245 El Camino Real hasn't gone anywhere and won't. If you're weighing whether to spend a Sunday morning at Tustin Legacy or a Sunday at 11 a.m. in Old Town on October 4, those are two different mornings: one is a market morning at The District, the other is a restaurant-anchored festival in Old Town.
Old Town's October date comes from a restaurant with deep roots on El Camino Real, alongside newer neighbors like Centro Storico and GEN. The District's fall calendar comes from organizers such as Parenting OC and Svn Social, who bring families and wellness shoppers to Park Avenue on specific weekends. Each fills a different kind of weekend, and both are worth putting on the calendar. The Sunset Market is only taking the season off, so El Camino Real and Third Street will host it again when its May-through-September season comes around.
If you're weighing a move in or out of Old Town and want a read on how a block's day-to-day rhythm holds up against the rest of Tustin, Coko Homes tracks these details street by street across Orange County and is happy to walk through what a specific address is actually like to live near.
