46th Telluride Mushroom Festival: Full Schedule

SCHEDULE LAUNCH IS JUNE 21st, 2026

Welcome to the largest wild mushroom happening in North America, the 46th Annual Telluride Mushroom Festival! This program of the Telluride Institute, a 501c3 non-profit, offers a plethora of events ranging from foray and mushroom ID sessions, to hands-on demonstrations and lectures—all led by regionally, nationally, and internationally-known experts, (and we cannot forget the wide variety of social and cultural events offered, along with the famous Mushroom Parade!) there is plenty for everyone, every day.

On this website, you can filter your search by events, venues, presenters, etc. Each year the Mushroom Festival features many wonderful presentations on “all things fungi.” Presentations on similar topics are grouped together at the same venue so that attendees interested will be able to spend more time learning and interacting, and less time walking between venues. See who else is interested in each event and interact with our extended Mushroom Family.

See you soon!

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9:00am MDT

BIPOC Community Closing

Sunday August 16, 2026 9:00am - 10:00am MDT

Wilkinson Public Library- Program Room @ 100 W Pacific Ave, Telluride, CO 81435, USA

The Telluride Mushroom Festival has long been a place where people gather to celebrate fungi, science, art, education, and community. This year, the festival is piloting a BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) Community Gathering Space to help foster connection, belonging, and long-term participation within the mycological community.
This gathering is a BIPOC affinity space created for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color attendees seeking connection, reflection, and community with others who share similar lived experiences. While many festival events are open to everyone, this space has been intentionally created to support BIPOC participants.
The purpose is to provide an opportunity for connection, conversation, and community among attendees who share experiences of navigating mycology, conservation, outdoor spaces, and environmental fields from historically underrepresented backgrounds.
We also warmly welcome BIPOC members of the Telluride community and surrounding region. Recognizing the many Indigenous, Latin American, and other cultural traditions that have shaped our relationship with fungi, we hope this gathering helps community members feel seen, welcomed, and connected throughout the festival.
The space will include an anonymous reflection box where participants may share thoughts, questions, stories, hopes, challenges, words of encouragement, or reflections from their festival experience.
Whether someone chooses to engage in conversation, seek community, share a story, contribute a reflection, or simply sit quietly with a cup of tea, they are welcome.

Speakers

Clarissa Arana

Foray Leader

Clarissa Arana is a Colorado-based mycologist, foray leader, and passionate citizen scientist with over a decade of experience in mushroom identification, ecology, and community education. She serves as the Founder and President of the Front Range Mycological Society (FRMS) and works... Read More →

Sunday August 16, 2026 9:00am - 10:00am MDT
Wilkinson Public Library- Program Room

FREE - Open to public

9:00am MDT

Closing Yoga: Ground & Reflect

Sunday August 16, 2026 9:00am - 10:00am MDT

Town Park @ 500 E Colorado Ave, Telluride, CO 81435, USA

As the festival comes to a close, let’s return to the body to reflect, integrate, and ground the wisdom received. What have you learned? What will you take with you? Tap into that grounded, peaceful space within yourself. Know that it’s available to you wherever you are, whenever you need it.

This is a one hour, all levels yoga experience with plenty of instruction for beginners to follow along!

Bring your mat, water, and any comforts for your practice. We will have mats available for those who do not have them on a first come first served basis.

Sunday August 16, 2026 9:00am - 10:00am MDT
Town Park

FREE - Open to public, Yoga

9:00am MDT

ID Tent - Fungi of Colorado 101

Sunday August 16, 2026 9:00am - 10:00am MDT

Elks Park @ 123 South Oak Street, Telluride, CO 81435

Ok you've had several days of mushrooming with the Festival experts. You went to the introductory lectures on mushrooming. You went on all the forays. You spent a lot of time at the ID tent learning from experts. You even ate some of the strange wild mushrooms...and survived! Is your head spinning? It may be the altitude. Or it may be that you're suffering from Mycophilia!

This presentation will be a discussion of the morphology and how to know & identify mushrooms, with live specimens for you to handle, smell, and review with experts.

Speakers

Britt Bunyard

Program Director, Telluride Mushroom Festival

Britt Bunyard, PhD, is the founder, Publisher, and Editor-in-Chief of the mycology journal Fungi, in print since 2008. Britt is a former university professor and has published over 100 academic and popular science papers. He has served as an editor for mycological and entomological... Read More →

Ken Kassenbrock

Colorado State University

Ken Kassenbrock, MD,PhD has been an avid hunter of wild mushrooms since the late 1970s. Trained as a physician-scientist, he has worked in Cell and Molecular Biology, including post-doctoral work with the brewer’s yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Although his interests in fungi... Read More →

Sunday August 16, 2026 9:00am - 10:00am MDT
Elks Park

FREE - Open to public, General Mycology

9:00am MDT

Mini Mush Film Fest!

Sunday August 16, 2026 9:00am - 10:30am MDT

Palm Theatre @ 721 W Colorado Ave, Telluride, CO 81435

NCY Milky Band, Magic Mushroom 3:35min
A fun Intro...

Hamilton Pevec, Fest In Show (Remastered) 25 min
Competitive mushroom costume making reaches uncharted territory when a new rival enters the scene. Vicious competition meets hand crafted art in this twisted documentary film. Featuring the "unbeatable" costume team: Jessica Langley, Ben Kinsely and Riitta Ikonen. Shot on location at TMF 2023.

Joel Penner, Wrought 18 min
The award winning short film Wrought (2022) will be intro'd by the film's co-director, photographer and editor Joel Penner. Wrought begins with the most basic of problems: despite all our best efforts, food goes bad. Instead of turning away in disgust, this film invites us to zoom in and take a closer look. Wrought tells a larger story about the limiting binary categories we humans create for ourselves. It explores (and challenges) terms like spoil, ferment, compost and rot as it coaxes us to decompose our binary categories: good and bad, self and other, human and nonhuman, nature and culture. As the film title implies, we are all forged out of the relationships that transgress such binaries; we are all, indeed, wrought.

Maya Han, "Hidden Figures of Mycology" A Preview From the New York Myco Film Fest 25 min
Maya Han will showcase some TBA favorites and speak about her Films in the New York Myco Film Fest.
Maya Han is a Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary artist, writer, and filmmaker whose works give visibility to hidden histories, with recent projects focused on the natural sciences, environmental justice, and ecofeminism.

Giuliana Furci, The Mushroom Keepers 16 min
Fungi Foundation’s first documentary on ethnomycology in India serves as both a reflection on cultural erosion and a call to action for fungal and biodiversity conservation. By exploring the essential connections between fungi and the Khasi and Garo communities of Meghalaya, this film challenges viewers to reconsider their relationship with the natural world and invites us all to become stewards of the ancestral knowledge accumulated over generations.

Speakers

Giuliana Furci

Fungi Foundation de Chile

Giuliana Furci is a Chilean-British-Italian field mycologist, speaker, author, and founder of the world's first non-profit organization dedicated to fungi, Fundación Fungi or Fungi Foundation. She is a Harvard University Associate, National Geographic Explorer, author of a series... Read More →

Joel Penner

Filmmaker

Joel Penner is a National Geographic-featured documentary filmmaker based in Winnipeg, Canada. His work delves into the beauty of mortality and decay seen through the unique perspective provided by timelapse photography. His most recent short film Wrought has screened at over 65 film... Read More →

Maya Han

Artist + Filmmaker + Cultural Programmer

Maya Han is a Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary artist, writer, and filmmaker whose works give visibility to hidden histories, with recent projects focused on the natural sciences, environmental justice, and ecofeminism. She is an awardee of the 2026 New York State Council on the Arts... Read More →

Hamilton Pevec

Director of FEST in Show, Hamilton’s Mushrooms

Hamilton Pevec is an ethnomycologist, entrepreneur, and filmmaker who has dedicated his career to advancing medicinal mushroom efficacy and mycological science. He is president of the Western Colorado Mycological Association and founder of Hamilton’s Mushrooms, a premium mushroom... Read More →

Sunday August 16, 2026 9:00am - 10:30am MDT
Palm Theatre

Passholder Event (included in Festival Pass), Movie

9:00am MDT

Caminata de Recoleccion en Espanol- Spanish-Speaker Foray

Sunday August 16, 2026 9:00am - 12:00pm MDT

Telluride Library @ 100 W Pacific Ave, Telluride, CO 81435, USA

Juntemenos enfrente del Wilkinson's Library para una caminata de recoleccion unico, todo en Espanol, para identificar los hongos locales. Es un evento inclusivo en colaboracion con El Wilkinson Public Library.

Meet in front of the Wilkinson's Library for a unique foray offering, all in Spanish to identify local mushrooms. This is an inclusive event in collaboration with the Wilkinson Public Library.

Speakers

Dominique Bruneau

Spanish Speakers Foray Leader, Wilkinson Public Library

Domi Bruneau is a mountain lover from Chile. She has a background in Architecture and Landscape Architecture, which has led her to work on projects in urban planning, rural development, productive landscape design, and mapping design projects for the Geographical Society of Andean... Read More →

Chad Hyatt

Chef

Chad Hyatt is an expert forager and classically trained chef who has made a name for himself in northern California and beyond, sharing his delicious spin on wild mushroom cookery. He has cooked in a variety of restaurants and private clubs around the San Francisco Bay area, where... Read More →

Sunday August 16, 2026 9:00am - 12:00pm MDT
Telluride Library

FREE - Open to public, Foray

9:00am MDT

Mushroom ID Tent

Sunday August 16, 2026 9:00am - 12:00pm MDT

Elks Park & Oak Street Park @ S Oak St, Telluride, CO 81435, USA

Mushroom ID Tent: Located in the middle of Elks Park.

We will have experts helping define and talk to you about all the mushrooms found around the San Juans during the days. These stations will be led by our lead mycologists, Foray Leaders and some of the festival founders. ID Staffed most days around 12pm and goes until 3pm. It is variable with forays and weather.

Times:
Mushroom ID Tent
Thursday - Saturday, 9am - 5pm
ID Staff Hours - 12pm - 3pm
Sunday 9am - 12pm
ID Staff Hours - TBD

See you there!

Speakers

Linnea & Lee Gillman

Mushroom ID Tent Managers

Linnea and Lee Gillman have been with the Telluride Mushroom Festival from the beginning and running the Mushroom ID Tent over the years.

Linnea has an MS in mycology from Virginia Tech, is retired from the USDA Forest Service where she worked on mycorrhizal fungi, and is a co-aut... Read More →

Nickolas Rajtar

Foray Leader

Nick Rajtar is a forest pathologist and a mycologist who received his PhD at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities under his advisor Dr. Robert Blanchette in 2024. Rajtar currently is a post-doctoral researcher at UMN where his work focuses on the biosurveillance of invasive forest... Read More →

Andrew Wilson

Denver Botanic Gardens

Andrew Wilson is the Associate Curator of Mycology in the Sam Mitchel Herbarium of Fungi at Denver Botanic Gardens. His research studies the patterns and processes that shape mushroom diversity, where he has traveled the world to document and describe new species. As a curator he... Read More →

Sunday August 16, 2026 9:00am - 12:00pm MDT
Elks Park & Oak Street Park

FREE - Open to public, Vendor Village

9:00am MDT

Registration & Information Desk + Festival Merch!

Sunday August 16, 2026 9:00am - 12:00pm MDT

Elks Park @ 123 South Oak Street, Telluride, CO 81435

Welcome to the 45th annual Telluride Mushroom Festival. Join us in Elks Park, located in the middle of Telluride off Main Street for registration pick up. On this day (Sunday) we will have an abbreviated time slot for final pass purchases and last minute merch shopping sprees!

Registration - Festival Pass Wristband Pick-up
- Please bring QR code from email for expedited wristband / t-shirt pick up
- If multiple pass pick-ups please make sure order has extra passes attached or each attendee has a pass order print out
- Come knowing what T-shirt color and size you have if pre-purchased
- If you purchased a T-shirt before color options were available, you will get a choice
- Download this SCHED app to access the whole festival program

Festival Merch
- Please bring QR code from email for expedited wristband / t-shirt pick up to the merch and registration tent.
- Pre-ordered tees can be picked up with registration, all other merch shopping will be done in the merch tent this year.
- Items this year include 2025 fest tees, special edition tees, hats, stickers, posters, books, and other fun donated items from brands and businesses we love!

We hope you enjoyed this year's Festival...let us know what you thought as we are already planning for next year!

Speakers

Mariah Grimes

TMF Marketing and Sales Manager, Telluride Institute

Mariah is a freelance creative, website designer, and social media manager who has been working with the Telluride Mushroom Festival since 2022. Before divinely stumbling into her work with TMF, Mariah worked in hospitality/events working for various boutique hotels and wedding venues... Read More →

Sunday August 16, 2026 9:00am - 12:00pm MDT
Elks Park

FREE - Open to public, Registration and Will Call

9:00am MDT

Vendor Village

Sunday August 16, 2026 9:00am - 2:00pm MDT

Elks Park & Oak Street Park @ S Oak St, Telluride, CO 81435, USA

Vendor Village:
Located under both sides of the main banner in Telluride main street at the town malls. We will have a food vendor in Elk's Park, Pretty as Plants, serving up a mushroom based vegetarian menu.

Stop by and shop from local artisans, mushroom businesses, and all things fungi! From medicinals to dried mushrooms, cultivation use, to some cool TMF swag and a whole lotta unique crafts. Vendor Village is a must stop and shop for all people in and around Telluride.

Vendor Village hours:
Thursday - Friday 9 - 5PM
Saturday 9am - 5PM, with vendors having the option to close at 3PM
Sunday 9am - 2pm

See you there!

Speakers

Jackson Schneider

TMF Vendor Coordinator

Jackson has been assisting the TMF operations team as a year-round volunteer since 2025. This year will be his first year in the Vendor Coordinator role.

Rebecca Roberts

TMF Business Development & Operations Manager, Telluride Institute

Rebecca's first Telluride Mushroom Festival was 2018, the next four years she volunteered until eventually being hired at TMF's Partnership Manager. After 3 years in the role, she was promoted to Business Development & Operations Manager and co-leading the festival. She's spent the... Read More →

Sunday August 16, 2026 9:00am - 2:00pm MDT
Elks Park & Oak Street Park

FREE - Open to public, Vendor Village

9:00am MDT

Integration Space

Sunday August 16, 2026 9:00am - 2:00pm MDT

Integration Space - Elks Park @ W Colorado Ave, Telluride, CO 81435, USA

We are rooted in a harm reduction model that welcomes all people who need a place to process and/or would like support from our licensed therapists with psychedelic integration training, massage therapists and herbalists. This cozy and accessible lounge will host integration circles and have other alternative wellness modalities for festival goers to be able to down-regulate and integrate their TMF experience. This is a safe, quiet, space where everyone is welcome.

There will be programing in the space beginning at 11 Thursday, Friday & Saturday.

Speakers

Andrea López Boetsch

Casa Micelio

Rebecca Joy

Mycelia Transformation

Jennifer Pressey

TMF Integration Space Practitioner

Jenn holds a Master’s degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling and is a Licensed Professional Counselor Candidate (LPCC) as well as a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) in the state of Colorado. She has experience working with diverse populations and is passionate about supporting... Read More →

Sunday August 16, 2026 9:00am - 2:00pm MDT
Integration Space - Elks Park

Passholder Event (included in Festival Pass), Integration

10:00am MDT

ID Tent- Fungi of Colorado 102

Sunday August 16, 2026 10:00am - 11:00am MDT

Elks Park @ 123 South Oak Street, Telluride, CO 81435

Ok you've had several days of mushrooming with the Festival experts. You went to the introductory lectures on mushrooming. You went on all the forays. You spent a lot of time at the ID tent learning from experts. You even ate some of the strange wild mushrooms...and survived! Is your head spinning? It may be the altitude. Or it may be that you're suffering from Mycophilia!

This presentation will be a discussion of the taxonomy and phylogeny of mushrooms with live specimens for you to handle, smell, and review with experts.

Speakers

Nickolas Rajtar

Foray Leader

Andrew Wilson

Denver Botanic Gardens

Sunday August 16, 2026 10:00am - 11:00am MDT
Elks Park

FREE - Open to public, General Mycology

10:30am MDT

Ecstatic Dance in Honor of Katrina Blair

Sunday August 16, 2026 10:30am - 12:30pm MDT

Telluride Core Area (big white double peak tent by baseball fields) @ 500 E Colorado Ave, Telluride, CO 81435

Join us for a special Ecstatic Dance honoring the life, the love, and the light of Katrina Blair. We will give thanks for all that she was in this world while allowing our real emotions around her passing to be felt, expressed, and somatically integrated. Ecstatic Dance is a safe space to move and feel with raw authenticity. The music is often a journey around the world through multiple tempos and textures. In addition to an intentional opening, we will hold a closing circle, inviting heartfelt shares to be witnessed and supported.

Speakers

CodeStar

Wielding a style that blends organic instrumentation and vocals with deep bassy beats, expansive effects, loops, samples, and turntablism, CodeStar’s sets and productions are inspired by an invigorating love for music and dance. He brings a live and unique flavor to every occasion... Read More →

Sunday August 16, 2026 10:30am - 12:30pm MDT
Telluride Core Area (big white double peak tent by baseball fields)

FREE - Open to public

10:45am MDT

TMF History and the Psychedelic Movement

Sunday August 16, 2026 10:45am - 12:00pm MDT

Palm Theatre @ 721 W Colorado Ave, Telluride, CO 81435

Join Art Goodtimes for a walk back to the festival's beginnings and how the festival maintained an active platform for the discussion of all psychedelics and entheogens throughout the era of illegality and the government's failed War on Drugs -- in addition to all things mycological.

Speakers

Linnea & Lee Gillman

Mushroom ID Tent Managers

Art Goodtimes

Telluride Mushroom Festival Co-Founder. Festival Cultural Coordinator, Steward and Poet-in-Residence, Telluride Institute

Art Goodtimes is an Italian-American poet, activist, basketweaver, non-profit administrator and politician in Colorado, as well as a driving force of the Telluride Mushroom Festival since its beginnings in 1981.

He grew up in California where he was a member of the Mycological Society of San Francisco. He attended St. Joseph's Seminary for six years but graduated from San Francisco State University in 1970, doing post-graduate work at UC Berkeley Extension where he obtained a lifetime California... Read More →

Sunday August 16, 2026 10:45am - 12:00pm MDT
Palm Theatre

Passholder Event (included in Festival Pass), General Mycology

12:15pm MDT

Lithuania: Where Fungi Have Their Own TV Show and Some Woods Are Left to Turn Into Ancient Forest

Sunday August 16, 2026 12:15pm - 1:15pm MDT

Palm Theatre @ 721 W Colorado Ave, Telluride, CO 81435

Lithuania may not be the only mushroom-loving country, but it is one of the very few places where fungi have made it all the way onto national television in a dedicated TV show. Every autumn, mushroom season can feel like a collective migration into the woods - families arrive with baskets, inherited knowledge, strong opinions, and a set of unwritten rules about how to move through the forest. In some regions, these practices are recognized as intangible cultural heritage: an old bond with forests that has persisted even as recent decades increasingly treated woods mainly as timber.

Aurelija Plukė (creator and host of Lithuania’s only TV show devoted solely to mushrooms and the fungal world) shares stories from a truly mycophilic culture, including unexpected folk-medicinal uses of mushrooms such as Common stinkhorn “eggs” and the Lithuanian love affair with False morels. The talk also follows an emerging conservation turn toward non-interference - where the most radical act of restoration is simply protecting old woods from logging and letting them become ancient on their own terms, creating space for rare fungi to persist and be discovered.

Speakers

Aurelija Plūkė

Speaker & Foray Leader

Aurelija Plūkė is a Lithuania-based mycology educator and the creator and host of Lithuania’s first and only national TV show devoted entirely to mushrooms and the fungal world. A lifelong nature-lover, she fell into mycology through macro photography, discovering that what looks... Read More →

Sunday August 16, 2026 12:15pm - 1:15pm MDT
Palm Theatre

Passholder Event (included in Festival Pass), General Mycology

1:15pm MDT

Official Closing Ceremonies & Awards

Sunday August 16, 2026 1:15pm - 2:30pm MDT

Palm Theatre @ 721 W Colorado Ave, Telluride, CO 81435

The closing ceremony is a time to reflect on the festival and say goodbye to one another. Come as we close the festival off in ceremony and tradition.

Thank you to everyone that has made this year happen, for those who have given to the festival and have transformed an idea into a movement, we hope to keep bringing this Festival to you in all the new and changing iterations that we learn about the expansive world of Fungi.

Speakers

Laurie Lunquist

TMF Committee Chair, Board Treasurer, Telluride Institute

Mariah Grimes

TMF Marketing and Sales Manager, Telluride Institute

Rebecca Roberts

TMF Business Development & Operations Manager, Telluride Institute

Chris Grimes

TMF Operations & Volunteer Coordinator, Telluride Institute

When Chris Grimes isn’t foragin’ for vintage western wear somewhere in Appalachia, he’s likely off in the woods hunting mushrooms. A TMF volunteer since 2023, Chris returns for his sophomore year as Operations & Volunteer Coordinator, better known around camp as the Lead “Soft... Read More →

Britt Bunyard

Program Director, Telluride Mushroom Festival

Art Goodtimes

Telluride Mushroom Festival Co-Founder. Festival Cultural Coordinator, Steward and Poet-in-Residence, Telluride Institute

Ashley Coady Smith

TMF Festival Executive Officer, Telluride Institute

Ashley Coady Smith joined the Telluride Mushroom Festival in 2019 and currently serves as Festival Executive Officer. Working alongside the Program Director and Creative Director, she helps steward the festival's vision by guiding bigger picture operations, budgeting, fundraising... Read More →

Sunday August 16, 2026 1:15pm - 2:30pm MDT
Palm Theatre

Passholder Event (included in Festival Pass), General Mycology