McKinney Has Two Oktoberfests This Month, and Only One of Them Is Downtown

If you've lived in McKinney long enough to have opinions about parking on the Square, you've probably already gotten this wrong once. Someone mentions Oktoberfest, you picture lederhosen and a stein-holding contest at the courthouse, and you show up on the wrong weekend at the wrong address. McKinney runs two of them this September, eight days apart, in two different parts of town, with two different personalities. Neither is a secret exactly, but nobody's put them side by side for you.

That mix-up is a small thing. The bigger thing, the one worth actually knowing if you live here, is what's changed about the Square itself. The building that used to anchor that stretch of downtown is dark right now for renovations, and the thing that's filled the gap isn't a festival at all. It's a restaurant. That shift says more about where downtown McKinney's pull actually comes from these days than either Oktoberfest does.

Two Festivals, One Week Apart, Two Different Crowds

TUPPS Brewery runs its own Oktoberfest September 18 through 20, on its own grounds across Highway 5 from the historic Square. Eight days later, Historic Downtown McKinney runs its version, September 25 through 27, spread across the Square itself with three stages of polka bands and folk dancers. They share a name, a beer garden, a general commitment to bratwurst, and almost nothing else.

The downtown version is the one built for a crowd that fills the courthouse lawn. It's presented by Tomes Auto Group and backed by a long list of sponsors including Choctaw Casinos and Resorts, Kroger, Sheraton McKinney, and Hofbräu, and it leans into the kind of programming that only works at scale: more than 70 dachshunds and their "wannabe" canine friends racing for bragging rights on Saturday, a brat-eating competition capped at 10 contestants, and the 7th annual Beard & Mustache Competition kicking off Friday night at 8 p.m. Cultural District Director Andrew Jones put it plainly when the city announced this year's dates, saying the festival offers "something for everyone," whether that's the food, the beer, the shopping, or the family activities.

TUPPS' version is smaller by design. It's a brewery event on brewery grounds, which means it skips the road closures and the three-stage production in favor of something closer to a neighborhood party. If you're the type who wants Oktoberfest without the 70,000-person crowd the downtown festival has drawn in past years, TUPPS the weekend before is the better fit. If you want the full parade-and-competitions version, wait for the 25th.

The Building Sitting This One Out

Here's the part that actually changes how you should think about the Square this fall. The McKinney Performing Arts Center, housed in the old Collin County Courthouse, closed February 1, 2026, for a roughly $10 million renovation that city officials have targeted for a fall 2026 completion, though as of this past July no exact reopening date had been set. That building has been the Square's cultural anchor for two decades, the thing that gave the corner of Louisiana and Tennessee its reason to exist beyond retail.

Directly across the street from it sits Centro on the Square, a restaurant that opened in June 2025 from a pairing with real credibility behind it. Brian Dunne, owner of Mexican Bar Company in Plano, and George Stergios, owner of Knife Steakhouse, spent more than six years as neighbors in the restaurant district at The Shops at Willow Bend before deciding to build something together downtown. They told CultureMap they'd always been drawn to the energy of the Square, and that watching the foot traffic during construction reinforced the decision. The space itself is inside a building more than a century old, previously home to Harvest Seasonal Kitchen before that restaurant relocated downtown and rebranded. The menu leans Italian: handmade pasta, locally sourced steaks and seafood, craft cocktails, and a private dining room that seats up to 40.

What that means in practice is that the corner's identity hasn't gone dark along with the arts center. It's just changed hands. The thing pulling people to that intersection right now isn't a marquee, it's a reservation.

What's Actually Anchoring the Food Scene

Centro isn't operating in isolation. It joined a stretch of the Square that already had its own gravity, mostly along East Louisiana and South Tennessee streets, close enough together that you can do a full afternoon on foot without moving your car.

• Emporium Pies, 107 S. Tennessee St., has been a Square fixture long enough to rack up seven consecutive years as a local favorite pick, from 2017 through 2024, and still runs its Wednesday-before-Thanksgiving pickup tradition for pre-ordered pies.
• Bresnan Bread & Pastry, 301 E. Louisiana St., bakes European-style bread and pastry and shows up as one of the city's official downtown trolley stops, which tells you it's established enough to be part of the regular route rather than a pop-up.
• Collective Coffee, Neighbor Books, and Deviled Egg Co. round out the same few blocks, the kind of cluster that turns a walk to lunch into an actual loop instead of a single stop.

Put those together with Centro and the picture is a Square that doesn't need a festival weekend to justify a trip. That's a real change from a downtown whose biggest draws used to be seasonal: Arts in Bloom in spring, Oktoberfest in fall, Home for the Holidays at Thanksgiving. Those events still matter, but they're no longer the only reason to park downtown on a random Tuesday.

Getting Around Without Fighting the Festival Crowd

The Square runs on two separate transit systems depending on the calendar, and mixing them up is the second easiest mistake to make this month.

On a normal week, the free Downtown Trolley runs Thursday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m., with marked stops including Neighbor Books and Bresnan's Bakery on East Louisiana and TUPPS on the same street. It's a 14-passenger coach, ADA accessible, and pet-friendly for anyone bringing a well-behaved dog along for the ride.

During Oktoberfest weekend, that regular trolley schedule gets supplemented by a separate free shuttle specifically for the festival, picking up at First McKinney Baptist Church on West Louisiana and dropping off at Dr. Glen Mitchell Park. It's a different route serving a different purpose, timed to the festival crowd rather than the daily foot traffic.

Parking follows the same logic. On any given day, the free garage at Davis and McDonald holds 200 cars, Lots 5 and F sit just southwest of the pie shop, and Lot 1 near the library holds more than 100 spots and rarely fills. During the festival weekend, the city adds free parking and shuttle service on top of that baseline, which is worth knowing if you're trying to grab dinner at Centro on a Saturday when the Square is also hosting 70 dachshunds in a footrace.

The Actual Takeaway

If you're mapping out the next few weekends, the useful move is knowing which Oktoberfest fits what you want and which streets to walk if you'd rather skip both and just eat well. TUPPS the weekend of the 18th if you want something smaller. Downtown the weekend of the 25th if you want the full production. Centro, Bresnan's, and Emporium Pies any other week, no shuttle required.

The Performing Arts Center is expected back sometime this fall, and when it reopens the corner of Louisiana and Tennessee will have two reasons to draw people instead of one. For now, the fact that the Square's newest anchor is a restaurant rather than a stage says something about how downtown McKinney actually functions day to day, festival calendar or not.

If you're weighing what it's like to actually live near this stretch of McKinney, not just visit it for a weekend, Rhonda Brown can walk you through what different blocks around the Square offer and help you schedule a consultation to talk through the details.