Makawao Has a Second Rodeo Weekend, and Almost Nobody Marks It on a Calendar

Ask anyone in Pukalani or Makawao when rodeo season wraps up and most will say the Fourth of July, maybe the weekend after at the latest. That is when the Miranda family runs cattle and cowboys through the Oskie Rice Event Center for the Makawao Stampede, when Baldwin Avenue closes for the parade, when the whole town smells like plate lunch and dust for four straight days.

They are right that July is the big one. They are wrong that it is the only one. So what is actually happening at Oskie Rice Arena on October 24?

The Rodeo Everyone Already Knows

This year's Stampede followed its usual build. The Makawao Town Parade ran Saturday, June 27, at 9 a.m. along Baldwin and Makawao Avenues, complete with pāʻū riders in island colors and the stick horse race that kicks off even earlier at 8 a.m. The rodeo itself unfolded over the following weekend at the Oskie Rice Event Center on Olinda Road: the Bull Bash on Friday, July 3, the first night performance on July 4, Paniolo Day on July 5, and the Championship Patriotic Day closing it out on July 6. Nearly 250 competitors came from Hawaiʻi, the mainland, and beyond to compete on ground that has hosted this event since 1956.

The ranch behind it, Kaonoulu, marked its 110th year in 2026. Harald "Pop" Rice bought the land in 1916, and the arena still carries his name. Morag and Ken Miranda, Rice's descendants, run the show today as a fifth-generation family operation, which is a big part of why this weekend reads less like a tourist attraction and more like a family reunion that happens to sell tickets.

The One Almost No One Puts on a Calendar

Here is the part that gets lost. Makawao Rodeo Weekend returns October 23 through 25, with Aloha Festivals programming folded into Saturday the 24th at Oskie Rice Arena. Aloha Festivals turns 80 in 2026, running under the theme "80 Years of Aloha: Our Culture, Our Stories, Celebrating Our Island Home," and its Maui Nui slate treats Makawao's October weekend as one stop among several rather than a headline event on its own.

The same weekend, Wailea Village at the Four Seasons runs its own Aloha Festivals programming, October 23 through 25, with the Carmen Hulu Lindsey Leo Haʻihaʻi Falsetto Contest, a hālau showcase, and a closing concert. Molokaʻi's celebration lands earlier, on October 9 in Kaunakakai, and Hāna Weekend stretches October 17 through 24. Because Makawao's version rides inside this bigger island-wide rotation instead of getting its own dedicated push, it rarely makes it onto the same event calendars that circulate every July.

Why It Lines Up With the Art Show

Something else is running on Baldwin Avenue at the same time, and it is the reason the overlap matters. The Hui Noʻeau Visual Arts Center, working with the East Maui Watershed Partnership, is staging the 22nd annual Mālama Wao Akua, a juried show built entirely around Maui Nui's native species. Registration opened August 18 and closes September 1, with artwork intake at the Hui's Kaluanui estate on Baldwin Avenue that same day, and selection notices going out by September 3.

The exhibition itself then hangs from mid-September into early November, which means it is on the wall through the falsetto contest weekend in mid-September and still on the wall when the second rodeo weekend hits in late October. For close to seven weeks, one trip up Baldwin Avenue covers a working paniolo tradition and a juried native-species art show without a second drive. The show is open only to Maui Nui residents (Maui, Lānaʻi, Molokaʻi, Kahoʻolawe), across any medium, with its own keiki division alongside the adult one, which keeps it closer to a community project than a gallery event aimed at visitors.

What Fills the Weeks in Between

The weekly rhythm underneath both of those weekends is the same one it always is. The Makawao Farmers Market runs Wednesdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., right on Baldwin Avenue. The Upcountry Farmers Market, the larger of the two, runs Saturdays from 7 a.m. to noon at Kulamalu in Pukalani, in the Longs Drugs lot, and closes up once vendors sell out rather than at a fixed hour.

Restaurants follow their own pattern that residents already know but visitors don't. Casanova has anchored the crossroads of historic Makawao town since 1986. Hali'imaile General Store has been doing farm-to-table cooking since 1988. Makawao Public House leans into the town's paniolo heritage on the menu itself. Komoda Store and Bakery, the one everybody assumes is always open, actually closes Wednesdays and Sundays, so plan around it rather than around it being there. Stopwatch Bar and Grill sits on Makawao Avenue and doubles as the anchor for the one dependable free public lot in town, tucked behind the building, which is worth knowing before a gallery opening or a farmers market Saturday fills every curb on Baldwin.

The Layer You'll Need That Kihei Never Does

Temperature drops roughly 3 degrees for every thousand feet of elevation, and Makawao sits near 1,600 feet on the slope of Haleakalā. An October evening after the second rodeo weekend or a Hui Noʻeau opening runs noticeably cooler than the same night down at the coast, which is a small but real planning detail if you're coordinating a drive up from Kīhei or Wailea. Layer with that in mind rather than packing for the beach.

That cooler stretch from September into November also tends to be Maui's quieter season generally, with lighter visitor traffic than midsummer. Put together, the second rodeo weekend in late October ends up feeling almost nothing like the first one in July. Same arena, same family running it, same 110-year-old ranch behind the gate. Different crowd entirely.

What This Means If You Live Here

The practical version of all this is short. Mark both rodeo weekends, not just the one on the Fourth of July banner. Check Hui Noʻeau's hours before driving up for the Mālama Wao Akua show, since the exhibition schedule sits separately from the intake and notification dates. Note that Komoda is closed Wednesdays and Sundays before building a morning around it. And if a Baldwin Avenue evening is on the calendar for late September or October, grab that lot behind Stopwatch early, because it fills fast once the farmers market crowd and the gallery crowd start overlapping on the same block.

Living Upcountry means knowing which parts of the calendar are for visitors and which are for the people who never left after the parade ended. This stretch of the year belongs to the second group.

If you're weighing a move to this side of the island, or you already call Pukalani or Makawao home and want a read on how the market up here is actually moving, Emerald Club Realty has been part of this community across three generations of the Aki family. Reach out any time, work with our Maui Ohana.