QuickTake:

The free event, featuring live music, food vendors and activities ranging from karaoke to mechanical bull riding, is expanding to more downtown blocks. Hispanic heritage celebration Herencia Hispana will also return to the plaza outside Springfield City Hall. 

The Block Party in downtown Springfield is expanding.

Visitors to this year’s event, happening Saturday, Sept. 12, from 4 to 10 p.m., will find booths, food vendors and activities across 12 city blocks.

The party is growing from one to three live music stages, including one on A Street outside PublicHouse, which Block Party organizer Benjamin Wilkinson said will bridge the gap between Block Party activities on Fourth Street and Herencia Hispana, a Hispanic heritage celebration happening at the same time in the plaza outside Springfield City Hall. 

Wilkinson described it as “creating more energy and expanding outward.” 

New this year is a classic car show, the Todd’s Auto Body Show and Shine, which will take place on Main Street between Seventh and Eighth streets. 

“Certainly part of the vibrant community of people in Springfield is a strong car culture, nice vintage vehicles, that kind of stuff,” Wilkinson said. 

The kids’ bouncy houses, mechanical bull riding and karaoke will return. Roving performers will entertain visitors, including Samba Ja drum group, the Tsunami Skippers jump rope team, One More Time Marching Band and the Phi Long Lion Dancers.

“The whole party area is going to be full, and not that it wasn’t full in the past, but this is a whole other level of density and community in ways that really feel like when I first started doing this, this is what I had in mind,” Wilkinson said. 

The Alder Street All Stars perform on a transformed truck stage at the Springfield Block Party in Springfield, Sept. 5, 2025. Credit: Isaac Wasserman / Lookout Eugene-Springfield / Catchlight / RFA

The Block Party is free to attend. Sponsors include SELCO Community Credit Union, Jerry’s Home Improvement Center, Sanipac, PublicHouse, Emerald Bath Works, Springfield Drifters, Confident House Cleaning, Zipley Fiber and CLF Network.

Wilkinson estimates last year’s event had about 12,000 to 15,000 attendees. The event does not have an entrance, so the number is based on crowd size at comparable events, Wilkinson said. This year, The Block Party is working with an intern from the School of Planning, Public Policy and Management at the University of Oregon to gather more data, including about neighborhood impact, vendor growth and where attendees are from. 

“Our hope is that we’ll be able to prove what we already know to be true, which is this event serves not just Lane County but the entire Southern Willamette Valley as a fun community event, all the way from the coast to Central Oregon,” Wilkinson said. 

The Block Party hopes by documenting the wide reach of the event, it will qualify for support from the city’s transient lodging tax revenue. They’ll also use those statistics to apply for arts and culture grants, he said.

He said the party costs about $150,000 to put on, which includes paying for portable toilets, traffic control, security, permits, fees, printing banners and other merchandise, event staff and performers. 

The Block Party created a nonprofit last year called Community Activation Network “to organize free in-person community events that activate public spaces, support small organizations, and foster civic engagement and local collaboration while building community.”

The nonprofit, of which Wilkinson is the executive director, produces The Block Party and is looking at partnering with other organizations like the Rotary Club to build additional events or bring back historical ones, like the Broiler Festival and the Filbert Festival, events that Wilkinson said people remember from their childhoods “and would love to see revitalized.”  

Hispanic Heritage celebration

Herencia Hispana will return to the City Hall plaza from 5 to 10 p.m. with music and dancing.

The event will also feature the Mexican independence ceremony El Grito with representatives from the Consulate of Mexico in Portland. 

“It feels really good to be able to hold space where we are represented in culture, in language, right alongside all of our neighbors and everybody that shows up for The Block Party,” said Antonio Huerta, director of the nonprofit Comunidad y Herencia Cultural, which puts on the event. 

“And for me, as a Mexican, it also feels really good to have diplomats from the Consulate of Mexico in Portland bringing something that is very traditional in Mexico, and for those families that feel nostalgic of Mexico to be able to experience something as authentic, something as traditional as the El Grito ceremony,” Huerta continued. 

Community members gather in the plaza outside Springfield City Hall during the 2025 Herencia Hispana celebration. Credit: Ofelia Guzman Photography

The celebration will include traditional Peruvian music by singers Melba & Luis and a performance by 14-year-old Maria Paula Mazon, who gained internet fame four years ago for singing songs by the late Selena Quintanilla-Pérez. 

Young people will also have the opportunity to participate in a dance from the state of Guerrero in Mexico called La Iguana, which imitates the movements of an iguana.

“Then we’re going to offer prizes, so just kind of try to make it casual, make it fun, and also to create spaces for youth,” Huerta said.

The event will wrap up with a performance by Eugene band Los Vientos. 

Huerta said Herencia Hispana, which the organization has been hosting in Springfield for about a decade, continues to grow. Holding the event on the same day as The Block Party allows community members the opportunity to experience both events, “and ultimately to have the downtown area as lively as you can get it,” he said.