Most Marin summers get told as a list. The County Fair over five days in San Rafael. A Sausalito Friday concert. A Belvedere Sunday at the Community Center. Ten farmers markets on nine different days.
The list is real, but it is not the pattern. If you live in central Marin, the pattern is that one address at 2257 Larkspur Landing Circle has restructured its calendar so that Friday night, Saturday morning, and Sunday afternoon each have a default. The Mart is no longer a place you go. It is the container the season pours into.
The week has a shape now
For years the Saturday Marin Country Mart farmers market ran 9am to 2pm, rain or shine, year-round, and that was most of the story. In 2026 the Mart has layered two more standing programs on either side of it, and the effect is a three-day cadence you can hold in your head without checking a calendar.
| Day | Anchor | Hours | What's new in 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Friday | Movie Night under the Big Tent | 6 PM | Runs June 19 through October 30 |
| Saturday | Farmers' Market | 9 AM to 2 PM | Mart Littles programming and live music built into the morning |
| Sunday | Pony rides and mahjong | Afternoon | Pony rides behind Rustic Bakery through year's end, free mahjong open play under the Big Tent |
Read it as a schedule and it looks modest. Read it as an editorial choice about how the Mart wants a Marin household to use the property, and it is the most deliberate residential-adjacent programming any single Marin site is running this summer.
Friday belongs to the Big Tent
The Movie Nights program is the newest of the three anchors and the one that has changed the character of the property most. Every Friday at 6 PM under the tent, a season of family films runs, from Babe and The Aristocats to Toy Story, The Lion King, Coco, and others. The pattern for July is set: Aladdin on July 3, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh on July 10, with the series holding weekly through the end of October.
The mechanics matter more than the titles. The screening starts with a Pixar short, and the tenants time their offers to it, with Miette running dollar macarons on movie nights until 5 PM and Rustic Bakery holding grab-and-go inventory until the same hour. Hog Island Oyster Co. and the other food tenants absorb the pre-show crowd. It is a program designed so a resident can leave home at 5:30 without a plan and land in something structured by 6:15.
For context, the closest analogous Friday routines in the county are the free concerts at Tam Valley Community Center and at Sausalito's Gabrielson Park. Both are excellent, both are singular in their locations, and neither runs into late October the way the Mart's tent does. The Mart is buying the shoulder season the concert programs cannot cover.
Saturday is a market plus everything around it
The Saturday market is the piece longtime residents already know, but the reason to look at it again in 2026 is how much of the morning is scheduled around it rather than by it. The Farmers' Market includes complimentary children's programming for the Mart Littles beginning at 9:30 AM, and live music by rotating artists from 11 AM to 2 PM. The market anchors a morning, not a stop.
The vendor list is unusually deep for a Marin market of this size:
- Produce and flowers: Country Line Harvest, Crane Creek Growers, Frog Hollow Farm, The Happy Dahlia Farm, Hidden Star Orchids, Iacopi Farms, Leap Frog Farm, Soda Rock Farm
- Dairy and cheese: Alexandre Family Farm, Ramini Mozzarella, Stepladder Creamery
- Protein: Anna's Seafood, Fallon Hills Ranch, Farmer Joy's Eggs, Rodriguez Brothers Ranch, Fungi Temple
- Prepared food on site: Casablanca Food Truck, Ethel's Bagels, The Hummus Guy, Rustic Bakery, Wafflemania, Monaco Truffles
The Saturday market and the Point Reyes Station market at Toby's Feed Barn share a day and an hour, which makes going out to Point Reyes a deliberate choice rather than a casual stop on the way home. The Mart's advantage is not selection. It is that the same trip gives a household its produce for the week and gives its children ninety minutes of live music and crafts without a second stop.
Also worth pinning to the Saturday circuit this summer: artist Ethan Estess is on view in the Sarah Shepard Gallery from June 25 through July 1, with a live screen-printing session on the patio and complimentary Outerknown totes and tees benefiting the Surfrider Foundation Marin Chapter. The Mart has been braiding gallery and retail events into the market morning for a while. In 2026 it is happening almost every weekend.
Sunday is the quiet program
The Sunday layer is the one most residents underuse. Pony rides operate behind Rustic Bakery through year's end, and free mahjong open play runs under the Big Tent. It is not marketed hard, and that is the point. Sunday at the Mart is the day the property is least trying to sell you anything and most functioning as a shared front yard for central Marin.
A few Sundays this summer break out of that quiet register. Father's Day this year staged burgers, beer, oysters, wine, and live music under the Big Tent on Sunday, June 21 from 11 to 5, with Loveski Dogs and Pastrami, Hog Island Oysters, Kermit Lynch Wines, and performances from Foxes in the Henhouse and The Depot Band. The June 13 Cake Picnic celebrating 45 years of Copperfield's Books, with author Elisa Sunga, ran outdoors behind Copperfield's under the farmers market tent. These are the exceptions that prove the ordinary rule: on any given Sunday, the default is low-key, and residents can treat that as a feature.
The Thursday layer is real but light. Thursday storytime for kids happens outside Copperfield's Books, which is worth knowing if your week starts collapsing before Saturday.
The July calendar to actually hold onto
If you take three dates out of this post, take these:
- Friday, July 3, 6 PM. Aladdin at Movie Night at Marin Country Mart. The one to bring visiting family to before the Fourth.
- Friday, July 10, 6 PM. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh at Movie Night. The one for the youngest cohort in your house.
- Saturday and Sunday, July 11 to 12. Wimbledon at the Mart, which turns the tent into a viewing venue during the market's normal hours.
The rest of the county programming lands around this without overlapping it. The Marin County Fair runs July 1 through 5 at the Fairgrounds in San Rafael, with the theme Stars, Stripes and Stories. The San Rafael 2nd Friday Summer Market runs the evening of July 10, from 5 to 9, and the smart move is to catch the Winnie the Pooh screening at the Mart at 6 and then drop into Fourth Street on the way home. The 2nd Friday market runs one Friday per month, May 15, June 12, July 10, August 14, and September 11, from 5 to 9 PM, alongside the 2nd Friday Art Walk. It is the only downtown night-market program in central Marin, and once a month it dovetails with the Mart's Friday hour cleanly.
Why this matters for how you actually live in Marin
The reason to notice a shopping center's programming calendar is that most Marin residents already have a default weekend rhythm, and defaults are hard to shift. Most Marin residents have a home market. Sunday at the Civic Center, or Saturday at Marin Country Mart, or Tuesday at Strawberry Village, and they go on autopilot, buying the same things from the same vendors. What the Mart has done in 2026 is take that autopilot and extend it forward and backward by a day.
There is a small logistical detail worth knowing if you are coming from Tiburon, Kentfield, or points north. Parking at the Mart is free, and additional free parking is available on weekends and nights at the Larkspur Ferry Terminal Building, a short walk over a pedestrian bridge. If you are coming from the city, the property is accessible by a 30-minute ferry ride from the San Francisco Ferry Building, which is why weekend guest afternoons increasingly start at the Ferry Building and end under the tent.
The interesting thing about a place organizing itself this deliberately around a resident's week is that it stops being a shopping center in the ordinary sense. It becomes closer to what a village green does in a smaller town, or what a private club calendar does for its members, with the difference that this one is free to walk into. For a household deciding how to spend a Marin summer without leaving the county, that is the shift worth registering.
If you are thinking about how a home fits into the actual weekly texture of a Marin summer, that is exactly the conversation Wynne + Morgensen is built for. Reach out to request a private consultation.