Walk down Water Street on any Wednesday this month and you'll find a town that has scheduled almost every hour of its remaining summer. There are still concerts in the park, still movie nights on the lawn, still a trolley clanging along its historic line. If you own a house here, your calendar is probably as full as the city's. But the June calendar had one notable omission.
What's still on the books through Labor Day
The Excelsior Morning Rotary Club runs Concerts in the Commons on Wednesday evenings through the end of the season, with food trucks and beer and wine service starting at 5 p.m. and music running 6:30 to 8:30 at Excelsior Commons Park. The proceeds go toward park improvements through the Rotary's Community for the Commons effort, so buying a beer at one of these shows is a small, direct way of paying for the next round of upgrades to the park you're standing in.
A few other fixtures are still running out the clock on summer:
- Cinema in the Commons: The Lego Movie on Saturday, August 15, and Sandlot on Saturday, August 29, both starting at 8 p.m., according to the city's own events page.
- The historic streetcar: Rides and carbarn tours from the Water Street platform on Thursdays between 2 and 5 p.m., running through August 27. August also gets its own edition of the StoryTime Trolley with Miss Debra, a recurring feature on the line.
- The farmers market: Tuesday afternoons downtown, with local produce and prepared food alongside the usual retail.
The Lake Minnetonka Triathlon did not appear on this year's June calendar.
The Lake Minnetonka Triathlon's 2026 status
Every June for years, the swim leg of the Lake Minnetonka Triathlon has kicked off from Excelsior Public Beach, a half-mile loop along the shoreline of Excelsior Bay with water sitting a comfortable 70 to 78 degrees. From there, riders pedaled a route through Excelsior and Chanhassen before a run along the lake that finished back at Excelsior Commons, next to the transition area, with volunteers, chip collection, and live music waiting at the line.
Organizers have not announced what comes next. On the event's own site, they were direct about it:
"We're currently exploring all options for the 2026 Lake Minnetonka Triathlon and haven't made any final decisions yet."
They also noted that registration, which normally opens every October 1, would not open on schedule this cycle. Now, with summer nearly finished, that statement is still the most recent word on the race, with no new date, no relaunch, and no cancellation notice posted since.
How Excelsior's events are organized
Here's the pattern once you look at how these events are actually staffed. Concerts in the Commons exists because a service club, the Excelsior Morning Rotary, decided to run it and keeps deciding to run it every year. Tour de Tonka, the bike ride that closes out the cycling season here, has grown from 819 riders in its first year back in 2006 to nearly 3,000 riders today, and the organizers are candid that pulling it off now takes roughly 600 volunteers. A portion of every rider's entry fee goes to a local food shelf, which is part of why the ride has kept its community backing even as it's scaled up from a modest club ride to one of the bigger cycling events in the west metro.
Cinema in the Commons and the streetcar rides are run directly by the city and the Chamber. The triathlon's 2026 status remains unresolved.
These events rely on clubs, volunteers, and city staff, and their calendars are shaped by the groups that organize them each year.
What's coming before the season ends
Two bigger events remain on the fall side of the calendar. Tour de Tonka is still moving forward and still recruiting the volunteer force it needs to run routes from 16 to 58 miles around the lake. Apple Days, a tradition dating back to 1935, is set for September 18 through 20 on Water Street, with craft booths, a kids corner, history tours, apple pie contests, and a beer and wine garden closing out the warm-weather season the way it usually does.
Tour de Tonka has the Chamber's backing and a volunteer pipeline built over two decades of steadily growing participation. Apple Days has ninety years of continuous run behind it.
For anyone who wants to help keep the calendar full rather than just watching it, the Chamber is still looking for Tour de Tonka volunteers, and Concerts in the Commons welcomes donations toward its park fund at the shows themselves.
The town underneath the calendar
None of this changes what makes Excelsior worth living in day to day, the one-square-mile downtown you can walk in twenty minutes, the two public beaches on the Commons, the docks at the Port of Excelsior where you can tie up instead of parking. The events that fill weekends here depend on the clubs, volunteers, and city staff who organize them each year.
If you're curious what a summer like this does to home values in a town this small and this in-demand, or you just want a second opinion on your own place while the market's active, Huerkamp Home Group knows this stretch of Lake Minnetonka shoreline well. You can also browse more on our Excelsior neighborhood page or reach out directly for a Free Market Valuation whenever you're ready.
