If you've lived downtown for more than a summer or two, you already have a mental calendar for the riverfront. FountainFest kicks things off over Memorial Day weekend, Jazz & Rib Fest hits its stride in late July, and then CBUS Soul Fest rolls in over Labor Day weekend to close the book. Pack away the SUP, the folding chairs go back in the closet, see you next May.

I've made that assumption myself more than once. It's wrong, and the way it's wrong actually matters if you want to get the most out of what's left of the season.

The closing bell doesn't ring once. It rings four times.

CBUS Soul Fest lands September 4 and 5 at Bicentennial Park, with Stokley and Lalah Hathaway headlining a lineup built around live music, food and what the festival calls a celebration of Columbus's Black culture. It reads like a finale, and for a lot of people it functions as one. But treat it as the whole story and you'll miss two things: a program that quietly ends before Soul Fest even happens, and two more free concerts that happen after it.

Here's the actual sequence, if you're mapping the rest of your August and September around the river:

• Now through August 25: Sensory-friendly Monday mornings at the fountain, 11 a.m. to noon, with reduced volume and no sudden bursts of sound or light. This is a new addition for 2026, and it ends nearly two weeks before Labor Day, not on it.
• Fridays through August: A 50 percent discount on one-hour kayak and SUP rentals at the Bicentennial Park boat launch near the Main Street Bridge. This is an August-only offer, not a standing summer deal.
• August: The city's free outdoor Fitness Classes series relocates for the month to Topiary Park on the North End, at 480 E. Town St., before moving again to CCAD Park at 60 Cleveland Ave. in September.
• September 4 to 5: CBUS Soul Fest at Bicentennial Park.
• The fountain's actual last day of the season is September 7, Labor Day itself, running its full 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. hours through the holiday.
• September 18 and September 25: Two more free Friday-night concerts at the Bicentennial Park Stage, featuring the Columbus Jazz Orchestra and the Dan Tyminski Band, both starting at 7 p.m. with food and drink available from 6 p.m.

That last line is the part most residents miss. The free concert series, run through Columbus Recreation and Parks in partnership with CAPA, the Columbus Symphony Orchestra and Columbus Jazz, doesn't stop when the fountain does. It has two dates that fall after the water's already off for the season. If your summer planning stops at Labor Day weekend, you're closing the book two chapters early.

What already happened, so you know where you stand

Jazz & Rib Fest wrapped July 24 through 26 at West Bank Park and Bicentennial Park, with a new Brass Band Stage added this year at the corner of Main Street Bridge and Belle Street, featuring New Basics Brass Band, Largemouth Brass Band and Mike Wade & The Nasty NATI Brass Band running alongside the main jazz lineup. If you missed it, that one's done for the year. Same for the earlier concert dates in the Bicentennial Park Stage series: Blind Boys of Alabama on June 5, the Columbus Symphony Orchestra on June 28, and Ruthie Foster on July 10.

What's still ahead is Dumpstaphunk on August 14, less than a week from now, the New Orleans funk act taking the Bicentennial Park Stage at 7 p.m. That's the next marked date on the calendar, and it's a good marker for where we actually are in the season. We're past the halfway point of the concert series, not near the end of it.

The part that actually catches people off guard

The sensory-friendly Monday hours are the detail I'd flag hardest if you have a kid or a family member who benefits from a quieter fountain experience. The regular fountain season runs a full 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. window from May 22 through September 7. The sensory-friendly version, with its reduced noise and softer light, is a narrower slice inside that season, Mondays only, from 11 a.m. to noon, and it stops on August 25. That's a full 13 days before the fountain itself goes quiet for the winter. If quiet hours matter to your household, that Monday date is the one to circle, not Labor Day.

The Friday kayak discount works the same way, in miniature. It's framed as a summer perk, but it's specifically an August offer at the Bicentennial Park boat launch near the Main Street Bridge, with spots limited and walk-ins accepted but not guaranteed. Once August ends, so does the discount, regardless of what the fountain schedule says.

Why this staggered pattern exists

None of this is arbitrary. The fountain, the concert series, the fitness classes and the discount kayaking are run by different combinations of partners, Columbus Recreation and Parks, Downtown Columbus Inc., CAPA and the Columbus Symphony among them, and each program has its own budget cycle, staffing plan and seasonal logic. A free concert series booked through CAPA doesn't need warm fountain water to function. A sensory-friendly accommodation tied to a specific staffing rotation doesn't need to match the calendar of a kayak vendor. They were never designed to end on the same day. It just looks that way from a distance, because Soul Fest is the loudest, most visible marker on the calendar and everything after it feels like an afterthought.

It isn't. The Columbus Jazz Orchestra date on September 18 and the Dan Tyminski Band on September 25 are full concerts with the same 7 p.m. start and the same food-and-drink setup that's been running since June. They're just quieter, later, and easy to miss if you assumed the season was over.

What I'd do with the next few weeks

If I were building out the rest of my August around the river, I'd put the Dumpstaphunk show on the calendar for August 14, use one of the remaining August Fridays for the discounted kayak run near the Main Street Bridge before that offer disappears, and get to Topiary Park at least once for a fitness class before the series moves again in September. I'd also make a point of the Monday sensory-friendly hour before August 25 if that's a feature that matters to my household, since it's genuinely one of the shorter windows in the whole lineup.

Then I'd hold September 18 and 25 open, not because Soul Fest wasn't a good send-off, but because the two Friday concerts after it are the actual last calls, and they tend to draw smaller, more local crowds precisely because half the city has already mentally closed out summer.

Living downtown means you get to treat the riverfront as a rotating set of small decisions rather than one big seasonal event. Knowing which piece ends when is the difference between catching all of it and catching the one night everyone else remembered to show up for.

If you're the kind of person who tracks a neighborhood this closely, whether that's the Scioto Mile's calendar or what's actually happening with home values a few blocks off the river, that's the conversation I like having. I'm always happy to talk through what's changing in Columbus, on the river or otherwise. Let's Connect with Sarah Moore any time.