Free Things to Do in Boulder

Everything on this list is genuinely free, and the catch column tells you where a cost can still sneak in, so your free day stays free. Sometimes that catch is money, like the reservoir charging per person for seven months of the year, walkers and cyclists included. Sometimes it's just timing, like a museum that closes on football Saturdays. Either way, you'll find it in the last column rather than at the gate.

Walking Boulder's open space costs nothing. Leaving the car somewhere sometimes does, and whether you pay depends on which trailhead you pick, what time of year it is, and where your car happens to be registered. It's a genuinely fiddly system, so it's worth two minutes before you drive up rather than a surprise at the pay station.

Our sister site Outdoor Boulder keeps the whole thing straight, trailhead by trailhead, with every fee taken from the agency that charges it, in its trailhead parking guide.

If you'd rather not think about it at all, the Boulder Creek Path sidesteps the question completely. Start from downtown, where you're walking anyway, and there's no trailhead and no fee to work out.

This is the part of free Boulder that gets overlooked, probably because the two museums everyone names both charge.

• CU Art Museum, in the Visual Arts Complex on campus. Free, no ticket, donations welcome. Groups of ten or more need to book two weeks ahead. Typically closed on Saturdays with a daytime home football game.
• The Dairy Arts Center galleries, at 26th and Walnut. Free and open daily from noon to 6 p.m. The cinema and theater are ticketed, but the galleries aren't.
• BMoCA, at 1750 13th Street. Pay what you want, in their words "whether it's one penny or one hundred dollars, you pick your admission fee." A $1 minimum applies only on card payments.

Add NCAR's Mesa Lab, which charges nothing for admission, nothing for parking, and nothing for its guided tours at noon on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. The catch there is access, not money: there's no public transit up the mesa, and the nearest bus stop is a 2.1 mile walk with 610 feet of climbing.

The Pearl Street Mall is four car-free blocks between 11th and 15th, and wandering it costs nothing. The street performers you'll hear are all acoustic, because amplified sound on the mall needs a separate city permit. Just know the mall's rules: no dogs, no bicycles, no skateboards, and no smoking.

The Boulder Creek Path runs 5.5 paved miles from Boulder Canyon on the west end out to the Stazio Ballfields past 55th Street, passing the main library, the Civic Area and the Dushanbe Teahouse. Flat, free, stroller-friendly, and the one Boulder outdoor experience with no parking problem at all if you start from downtown.

And the Boulder Farmers Market at 13th and Canyon costs nothing to walk through, Saturdays April through November and Wednesdays May through October. No pets, service animals only.

Downtown Boulder runs three free recurring events, all on the 1300 block of Pearl in front of the county courthouse. Bands on the Bricks is a free outdoor concert series on Wednesday evenings in early summer, June 10 to July 29 in 2026. The Pearl Street Stampede is a free CU pep rally at 7 p.m. the night before each home football game, led by a 1948 fire truck. Switch on the Holidays lights the mall and the courthouse on a Sunday in late November, the 22nd in 2026. The Pearl Street Arts Fest takes the third weekend of July.

More seasonal detail in the this weekend guide.

Getting outside is covered in our getting outside guide, with the trail detail on Outdoor Boulder. The free museums are in the Pearl Street and museums guide, and the indoor ones in the rainy day guide. The full Boulder guide covers every other category.