San Antonio Zoo has added a Día de los Muertos experience to Zoo Boo!, its fall event, and it runs through November 1. Fiesta de los Muertos is new for 2026, it is included with standard admission, and it is free for members. It is built as three themed areas, and the zoo calls them realms.
The timing is the point. Zoo Boo! finishes on November 1, which is Día de los Muertos itself, so the last day of the zoo’s forty-year-old Halloween tradition lands on the holiday the new section is built around.
What are the three realms?
Plaza de los Recuerdos is reached by crossing a marigold bridge, and it holds the Ofrenda de Animales. An ofrenda is the altar at the center of the holiday: photographs, candles, marigolds and a dead relative’s favorite foods, assembled so the person is welcomed back rather than mourned. This one is built for animals, and honors the ones that have mattered to people who visit. It is the piece of the installation that a family with a dog-shaped hole in it will find hardest to walk past.
Calaveras Salvajes puts the two halves of the zoo’s idea together directly. A calavera is a skull, usually the decorated sugar kind, and here the designs are painted across animal sculptures.
El Jardín de los Alebrijes is the garden. Alebrijes are the brightly colored fantasy animals of Mexican folk art, assembled out of parts that do not belong together, and they are the reason this realm reads as the one for small children.
Face painting, live entertainment and limited-time food and drink run across all three, and Saturdays add a DJ.
What else is in Zoo Boo!?
Trick-or-treating runs free every day from 4 to 5 p.m., and the candy is made with sustainably sourced palm oil. That is a smaller detail than it sounds and a more deliberate one: palm oil cultivation is one of the larger drivers of lowland forest clearing in Southeast Asia, and sourcing commitments are one of the few levers an institution has that reaches all the way back to the habitat.
The John and Greli Less Spider Rainforest is open with live spiders in it. The Whataburger Theater runs animal ambassador programs, which are the up-close presentations where a keeper brings an animal out to meet an audience, and the daily schedule is worth checking on arrival since those are timed rather than continuous.
Which days are worth picking?
Halloween, Saturday October 31, runs extended hours until 9 p.m. Sunday November 1 is the last day of Zoo Boo! and Día de los Muertos itself, which makes it the obvious day for the new realms specifically.
Tickets are cheaper bought online in advance, and the zoo suggests walking the realms earlier in the day, before the 4 p.m. trick-or-treat crowd arrives.
A zoo running a Day of the Dead section is a better fit than it first appears. Zoo Boo! has spent forty years being the not-frightening version of Halloween, and Día de los Muertos is a holiday about remembering rather than being scared. An ofrenda for animals is the kind of thing a zoo can do that nobody else in a city can.
San Antonio Zoo published its guide to Fiesta de los Muertos on October 26, and the Smithsonian’s explainer on Día de los Muertos sets out the ofrenda, the marigolds and the calaveras the installation draws on. We have covered the zoo before, in its Brewer Ocean Conservation Lab, and another Texas Halloween run in Animal World and Snake Farm Zoo’s Howl-O-Ween.
Quick answers
- What is Fiesta de los Muertos at San Antonio Zoo?
A new-for-2026 Día de los Muertos experience inside Zoo Boo!, the zoo’s fall event. It is built as three themed realms and runs through November 1.
- Does Fiesta de los Muertos cost extra?
No. It is included with standard admission and is free for San Antonio Zoo members.
- What are the three realms?
Plaza de los Recuerdos, reached across a marigold bridge and holding the Ofrenda de Animales; Calaveras Salvajes, where animal sculptures carry sugar-skull designs; and El Jardín de los Alebrijes, a garden of the brightly colored fantasy creatures of Mexican folk art.
- What is the Ofrenda de Animales?
An ofrenda is the altar at the center of Día de los Muertos, built with photographs, candles, marigolds and favorite foods to welcome the dead back rather than mourn them. The Ofrenda de Animales in Plaza de los Recuerdos is built for animals that have mattered to the people who visit.
- When does Zoo Boo! end?
Sunday November 1, which is Día de los Muertos itself. Halloween, Saturday October 31, runs extended hours until 9 p.m.
