The park day runs fourteen hours
The Marigold Project's Festival of Altars runs at Potrero Del Sol Park, which the organiser also calls La Raza Park. The organiser's festival page publishes the day in one line: "Installation begins @ 8am | High Noon ceremony begins @ 12pm | Entertainment begins @ 5 - 9pm". The altar guidelines page adds two more clocks: the set-up window is 8 am to 2 pm, and "CLEAN UP begins promptly at 10pm."
Those five clocks describe a 14-hour park day. Four hours from the installation start to the noon ceremony. Five hours from the ceremony to the entertainment. Four hours of entertainment. One hour from the last performance to the clean-up call.
The date the organiser publishes
The festival page dates the event to November 2, 2025, at Potrero Del Sol Park, and the home page carries the same date. No page reached on the organiser's site carries a date for the current edition.
LA GENTE SF, the band the site names for the entertainment, lists the edition on its own tour page as Monday, November 2, 5:00 PM to 9:00 PM, at Potrero Del Sol Park, 2827 Cesar Chavez Street, San Francisco, with the admission line "Free, Suggested Donation". November 2 falls on a Monday in 2026.
Two nights sit either side of it
The 8 am installation start is the first constraint. An altar builder living outside the city cannot make an 8 am park call on the morning of the event, and the organiser allows until 2 pm to have the altar standing. The arrival night is the night before.
The 9 pm finish and the 10 pm clean-up are the second. The park day ends after the dinner hour, and the organiser asks that the park be left as it was found, with people staying late to sort trash, compost and recycling. A guest who works to the end of the clean-up does not check out that evening.
The room demand therefore sits on the two nights bracketing the park day.
A free, alcohol-free day has no admission line
The organiser's FAQ answers the money question in three lines. Attendance is open to all. The event is family-friendly, alcohol-free and designed for all ages. There is no admission fee: "No, the festival is free and open to the public." The donation ask that funds the festival, its workshops and its artists is the only revenue line the organiser publishes.
The guidelines page states the day's rules. This is a noncommercial event. Alcohol is not allowed during the event. No amplified sound. Electricity is not supplied, and a silent generator needs advance notice. No fire. No staking into the ground and no digging. LED candles are preferred over flame, and a minimum of one gallon of water must stand at each altar. Trees take string only. The playground is closed to altars and candles.
Guests bring flowers, 8-inch glass prayer candles and mementos for the community altars. The information table sits at the benches in front of the playground. No bar operates at the park.
Time the checkout offer against 10 pm
The published park clear is the clock a late-checkout offer has to be set against. Entertainment ends at 9 pm. Clean-up begins promptly at 10 pm, and the organiser thanks those who stay late. A guest who stays for the full programme is not back at the desk before 10 pm. An offer timed to the 9 pm finish leaves that guest in the lobby with the room gone.
What the organiser does not publish
The Marigold Project publishes no attendance figure, no lodging partner, no room block, no rate and no shuttle. The scaled claims the site carries are its own: the festival was designed in San Francisco in 1992 by a Mexican immigrant woman and a group of marginalized creators, and it celebrates practices rooted in more than 2,500 years of Mesoamerican traditions.
What the desk does with it
The park day is a free, alcohol-free, all-ages draw with no ticket line and no bar. The room nights it produces are the two either side of the park day. The two prompts the front desk owns are the arrival the night before the 8 am installation call and the departure the morning after the 10 pm clear, and the clean-up clock is the one to write down.