Become a Festival Partner
Each October, more than 300 destinations across the city open their doors for three days of behind-the-scenes access. Will you be among them?
Colossal Media
Credit: Nicolas Lemery NatelOpen House New York Weekend is a five-borough festival that helps people understand why the city looks, feels, and functions the way it does. Attended by more than 50,000 people—including New Yorkers from 89% of the city’s zip codes—the festival is a celebration of design, culture, and civic investment.
Festival partners open doors to skyscrapers, subway tunnels, and everything in between, and they lead tours and activities exploring projects and ideas that define New York. If you have expertise about a space that more New Yorkers should know about, send your place or tour idea.
Ready to sign up?
Send us your place or tour idea to ohnywknd@ohny.org
Become a partner by:
- Unlocking the doors to places not usually open to the public for at least 4-hours or 100 people.
- Leading tours or developing a self-guided tour to share your perspective and expertise.
- Hosting an activity—a performance, a kids workshop, or something else.
Our Open Call opens in May. The deadline to register is June 15, 2026.
A fee of $250* ($75 for nonprofits, $0 for government agencies) provides partners with:
- Promotional campaigns that reach more than 300,000 people and receive significant press coverage. Each activity gets its own listing on our website.
- Volunteers ready to help with crowd-control (managing lines, greeting attendees, blocking off-limit areas) and collect attendance data.
- Ticketing services if your space has significant capacity or security restrictions. If a tour is ticketed, you’ll receive the guest list days before the event.
*Our fee should not be a barrier to your participation. Request a waiver if you need one.
Fort Totten Historic Walking Tour. Photo: Ben Helmer.
Sample Experiences
Special Tours and Family Activities: Hudson River Park's Wetlab
During OHNY Weekend, the Hudson River Park Trust offered special activities for Drop-In visitors during a 4-hour afternoon block. The River Team led guided tours of the research aquarium facility and park, and provided interactive experiences for children, including a touch tank for local wildlife.
Behind-the-Scenes Access: Intrepid Sea, Air, and Space Museum
To give Open House New Yorkers a special look into the Intrepid, the museum led Ticketed tours of their aircraft restoration hangar. Two members of the restoration team took visitors into their workshop and spoke about their restoration process. Four 1-hour tours were offered for 25 guests each.
Drop-In Access: Brooklyn Army Terminal
The former Army supply base, now an industrial park operated by NYCEDC, opened to the public for drop-in visits. First-come, first-serve guided tours of the main atrium were offered on the hour. Self-guided tour materials also were available for festival visitors to explore the location on their own, at their own pace.
Design and Construction Tours: ABC No Rio
Open House New Yorkers got a first look at the cutting-edge new facility being built for this Lower East Side arts center on hard-hat construction tours led by the project architect, Paul A. Castrucci, and ABC No Rio’s Executive Director. Three 1-hour tours were offered for 30 guests each.