SoFA Street Festival — Downtown San Jose

San Jose’s SoFA Street Fair returned Sunday, April 26, with live music spread across South First Street in the city’s SoFA arts district. (sofastreetfair.com) (artboutiki.com) The spring 2026 edition ran Sunday afternoon, with the official schedule listing performances beginning at 2 p.m. and continuing into the evening. (sofaspring26.sched.com) (artboutiki.com) This year’s lineup included DJ SPUN, Andre Thierry, The Hellflowers, Dream Tellers, Gunderson High School Band and Gunderson High School Jazz Band. (sofaspring26.sched.com) The schedule also showed specialty programming alongside the bands, including a SoFA Drag Race, Haberdasher burlesque performances, and sets on stages labeled Caravan, Circle A, Project X and Soul Street. (sofaspring26.sched.com) Organizers describe the event as a free, all-ages music festival that usually packs 80 to 100 bands onto more than 10 stages across two blocks. (sofastreetfair.com) That scale helps explain why the fair has become one of the recurring public events tied to the SoFA District, the downtown San Jose neighborhood built around galleries, clubs, theaters and restaurants. (sofastreetfair.com) (sanjose.org) The fair’s history stretches back to 1992, when the first SoFA event took over three blocks in what organizers call downtown San Jose’s arts and theater district. (sofastreetfair.com) The original run paused after the Sept. 11 attacks, then returned in 2014 with a new mission as a free community event. Organizers now stage it twice a year, on Sundays in late April and late September. (sofastreetfair.com) By Sunday evening, the spring edition had again turned the SoFA name into its literal pitch: a street fair built around San Jose’s local music scene, back on the blocks where it started. (sofastreetfair.com)