Colorado Pizza Festival in Longmont: What to Know Sept. 5

During the early months of the pandemic, Antonio's Real New York Pizza owner Anthony DeSousa put a sheet-pan rack outside his Estes Park location and stocked it with bread, beans, and flour for anyone who needed it. No sign-up sheet, no questions. That instinct, help first and figure out the logistics later, is the same one driving the biggest thing to hit downtown Longmont this September: a citywide street closure built entirely around pizza.

On Saturday, September 5, from 1 to 10 p.m., 4th Avenue and Kimbark Street shut down to cars for the inaugural Colorado Pizza Festival. More than 20 pizzerias from across the state will set up ovens on the pavement, The Motet headlines a stage at the intersection, and by the time the last slice sells, the event expects to raise real money for hunger relief on the Front Range. If you already live here, the useful thing to know isn't that pizza is coming to Main Street. It's that three of your neighbors built this from scratch, in under a year, because a federal funding scare in late 2025 turned into a food drive that got out of hand in the best possible way.

What Actually Happens on September 5

The festival occupies the same two-block footprint downtown Longmont already closes for its Fourth of July block party, so if you've navigated around that closure before, you know the drill. This time the reason is pizza, not fireworks.

Doors, or rather, the open street, run 1 p.m. to 10 p.m. General admission gets you into the festival grounds and the full slate of live music; food and drinks from individual pizzerias are purchased separately, vendor by vendor, the way you'd pay at any food truck rally. If you want to sample widely without pulling out your wallet at every booth, there's a Golden Ticket option that includes unlimited pizza samples from participating vendors, but only during the 1 to 6 p.m. window.

Early planning documents from earlier this year had general admission penciled in around $10. By the time tickets actually went on sale, the price had settled at $15, with City Cast Denver noting the total lands closer to $20 once processing fees are added. Worth knowing before you buy if you're trying to budget a family outing.

Three Pizzerias, Two Blocks, No Rivalry

Here's the part that makes this more than a food truck rally with better branding. The festival is presented by Pizza With Purpose, a nonprofit founded by Urban Field Pizza and Market, Rosalee's Pizzeria, and Antonio's Real New York Pizza. All three operate along Longmont's Main Street corridor within walking distance of each other, which means the people running this thing compete for the same regulars on any given Tuesday night.

Urban Field, led by chef Nick Swanson and co-founder Paul Nashak, built its name on Detroit-style pies with caramelized cheese edges and rotating seasonal toppings that have included banh mi and gyro pizza. Rosalee's, under owner James Ross, had been looking for a way to partner with the national hunger-relief group Slice Out Hunger for years. Antonio's, run by DeSousa, brought the instinct from that Estes Park sheet-pan rack.

The three didn't just decide to be friendly. Nashak has described the arrangement bluntly: "we are just living in the same room in the same house." Pizza With Purpose launched officially on February 9, 2026, National Pizza Day, when all three restaurants donated a dollar from every pepperoni or cheese pizza sold that week to Slice Out Hunger. An Urban Field employee with nonprofit experience had organized a food drive around the same time, motivated by concerns about disruptions to SNAP benefits. That single drive produced 170 family-size meals distributed to people who needed them. Nashak has said the turnout surprised everyone involved, and that surprise is what turned a one-week fundraiser into a nonprofit with a signature annual festival.

Where the Money Actually Goes

Proceeds from the September 5 festival benefit four organizations: Slice Out Hunger, a national nonprofit that partners with more than 700 pizzerias and has raised over $2 million toward hunger relief, alongside three groups with more direct Front Range reach, Longmont Food Rescue, Community Food Share, and Colorado Friendship.

That split matters if you're deciding how to think about your ticket money. Slice Out Hunger operates at a scale most Longmont residents will never interact with directly. Longmont Food Rescue is the group actually redistributing food within city limits. Buying a Golden Ticket instead of general admission, in other words, isn't just an upgrade to unlimited samples. It's a bigger check written to organizations working blocks from where you're standing.

Left Hand Brewing, one of the festival's co-producers, is donating a portion of its beer sales from the day toward the same cause, so even a drink purchased at the festival does double duty.

If You're Not Buying a Ticket

The closure affects two downtown blocks for nine hours, which means most of Main Street's regular businesses stay open and reachable, just with a different walk to get there than usual. If you're not planning to buy in, the practical move is to treat September 5 like any other downtown event day: park a block or two out and walk in, rather than circling for something close to 4th and Kimbark.

For anyone who does want in without committing to a full day of eating, a few things are worth knowing. Kids 12 and under get in free, which makes this one of the more affordable family outings downtown has had this year. There's an amateur cheese-pizza competition presented by Forno Bravo, open to anyone willing to bring their own dough, sauce, and cheese and fire it live on a Forno Bravo oven in front of a crowd. Prizes include an Ooni pizza oven, gift cards to Urban Field, Rosalee's, and Antonio's, and automatic entry into next year's competition. Nashak has called the accompanying "Pizza Olympics" ceremony "not quite serious," which tracks with an event built by people who spend their days actually running kitchens rather than staging spectacle.

The lineup on the outdoor stage runs the length of the afternoon and into the evening, with The Motet's Funk Is Dead set headlining, supported by The Other Brothers, Bill McKay's All-Star Allman Brothers Cover Band, and opener David Lawrence and the Spoonful. If you're the type who shows up for the music and grazes on whatever smells best, the schedule gives you a full day without needing to plan around any single vendor's line.

Among the more than 20 pizzerias confirmed so far, one worth flagging if you're pizza-curious rather than pizza-loyal: Slice House, run by Tony Gemignani, ranks 14th in the country on the 2025 50 Top Pizza list and is the only Colorado pizzeria to make that ranking. Gemignani has competed on podiums in Naples, which is a different level of pedigree than most street festival vendors bring with them. He'll be at the same intersection as Urban Field's Detroit-style pies and Antonio's East Coast slices, which is a fairly remarkable lineup for two blocks of Main Street.

Why This Is Worth Knowing Now

Longmont has hosted plenty of one-off events. What makes this one different is the stated intent behind it. Nashak has said the plan is for the festival to run annually and keep growing, which means September 5 isn't a single closure to route around once and forget. It's the first version of something that's likely to become part of how downtown marks the end of summer, the way the Fourth of July block party already is.

If you've lived in Longmont long enough to remember when Main Street's food scene was mostly diners and drive-throughs, this is a useful marker of how much that's shifted. Three pizzerias within walking distance of each other didn't just survive next to one another. They built a nonprofit and a statewide festival together, and the reason had nothing to do with tourism marketing and everything to do with a sheet-pan rack on a sidewalk during a hard year.

If downtown Longmont's food scene, its street closures, and the kind of neighbors who turn a hard year into a citywide fundraiser are part of why you want to stay rooted here for the long haul, Jane Kraemer would love to talk through what that looks like, whether you're watching the market from the sidelines or ready to make a move. Reach out to schedule your free market consultation.