Fall Food Truck Festival brings over 30 food trucks to downtown Aurora Sept. 25

Downtown Aurora should be a busy place on Friday, Sept. 25, as the city offers its Fall Food Truck Festival, a four-hour event that will likely attract thousands to the city center.

Beginning at 5 p.m., Benton Street from Broadway to River Street will be closed in order to allow more than 30 food trucks to offer food that will run the gamut from burgers and pizza to vegan choices, specialty drinks, tacos, dessert options and more.

Christina DiCristofano, special events coordinator for the city of Aurora, said this year the city reverted back to an older format with spring and fall food truck fests after offering the event three times in 2025.

“Last year, we had a spring, summer and fall food truck festival, but we noticed it was a little too hot last summer for an event in mid- or late July and so we kind of scaled back to make sure the (spring and fall) events were well-attended and everyone could have an enjoyable time,” she said.

“We’re honored to have this and it’s one of our last events of the season as well,” DiCristofano said. “I think it’s a great way for people to come out and enjoy some of our amazing food and see some of our new vendors that we have and kind of close out the late summer, early fall season with a bang.”

DiCristofano said the fest on Friday should draw a big crowd.

“It’ll be well-attended, we feel,” she said. “Our spring event was one of our best ones yet, so I think people are hearing about it even more. We have a lot of vendors that are unique to our Aurora food truck fests, and I think people will be excited to come out to a fall-type of event before the winter comes.”

She said there will be a lot of new vendors at the event Friday.

“I think we actually have close to 13 new vendors this fall that weren’t there in the spring. We’re also going to have face painting and balloon animals and a live DJ again and hopefully some fall decor to kind of give it that fun vibe,” she said. “We try to mix things up and want to make sure we have a couple of family activities.

“We’ll have an apple cider mini-doughnut truck there, so that will be a good one for the fall as well as a few different drink vendors, lemonade, dessert vendors with things like banana pudding, minipancakes and a lot of different barbecue trucks, which will be great. I think two or three of them are new and everyone likes those fresh, grilled flavors,” she said.

DiCristofano said that close to 5,000 people came out for the spring food truck fest, a number that she said “was either our best or our second-best food truck attendance since we’ve taken it over.”

“This could be the biggest one ever with good weather. I think the event speaks for itself as far as people wanting to come out and enjoy some awesome food and support local vendors as well as new vendors that are always in the area,” she said.

For more on the Aurora Fall Food Truck Festival, go to aurora.il.us.

David Sharos is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.