Gilroy Garlic Festival Makes Return Years After Shooting and Pandemic Pauses

On Friday morning, just before 10 a.m., Gilroy’s Garlic Queen will take a torch to the famed 8-foot garlic bulb sitting in the grassy field beyond the gates of Gilroy Gardens and light its tip, marking the official opening of the city’s three-day garlic festival.

Garzilla, the 1,000-pound steel bulb sculpture, will burn through Sunday night, as has been the Gilroy Garlic Festival’s tradition for more than 30 years.

“We light the bulb and the day begins,” said Tom Cline, a city councilmember and former president of the Gilroy Garlic Festival Association, the nonprofit that puts on the event. “That’s what I’m looking forward to,” he said, “being able to watch people come into the venue and seeing them smile and just looking forward to a fun weekend.”

When the festivities kick off, it will be for the first time in six years, since the world-renowned event ended in a devastating shooting that killed three people.

On the evening of July 28, 2019, as the 41st annual festival was wrapping up, 19-year-old Santino Legan crept along Uvas Creek with an AK-47 style rifle, a backpack full of ammunition and bolt cutters. After cutting open a chain-link fence on the eastern edge of Christmas Hill Park, where the event was held, he opened fire near an inflatable slide where children and adults were soaking in the final minutes of the year’s festivities.

In an attack that lasted less than a minute, Legan fired more than 36 rounds of ammunition, striking 20 victims.

Three festival-goers, including two children, died. Seventeen others were injured. Law enforcement officers shot at Legan, a Gilroy native, before he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

In the years since, the small Santa Clara County town famed for the sharp, sulfurous smell of its signature crop has struggled to bring the Garlic Festival back.

The COVID-19 pandemic and skyrocketing insurance costs driven by the shooting made it unfeasible for the festival association to pull off the large event, leading them to cancel it for the “foreseeable future” in 2022.

The city estimated insuring the event would cost $10 million after the violence, according to Greg Bozzo, Gilroy’s mayor and one of the figures instrumental in the festival’s return. Gilroy was also embroiled in a protracted lawsuit brought by shooting victims, who alleged the city and other event organizers’ lax security was to blame. A judge dismissed the city from the suit in 2023.

The festival association has tried to maintain some kind of annual event since. But 2025 is the first year it’s been able to host a festival, even though it will be a scaled-back version of the event Bay Area fans are used to.

The festival will be held at South County Grove, a private event space within Gilroy Gardens, which is also home to a family theme park. The smaller footprint means instead of drawing crowds up to 40,000 like it used to, tickets for this year were capped at 3,000 per day. All 9,000 sold out within hours.

Bozzo said the smaller event isn’t necessarily the new normal, though.

“This is the size of the event that we could have this year based on the hand that we were dealt,” he told KQED. “My message to people who are unable to come is that 3,000 people per day is not the new era, it’s the beginning of the new era. Looking ahead, we are optimistic about the future of the Garlic Festival, which includes growth.”

The event’s signature “Gourmet Alley,” known for preparing all kinds of garlic-forward dishes, will still be serving pepper steak sandwiches and garlicky calamari. There’ll also be live music on the main stage throughout the three days, as well as live cooking demonstrations, an arts and crafts area and a beer and wine garden with drinks for purchase.

While the weekend is bound to bring back memories of the 2019 tragedy for Bozzo and many Gilroy residents, he said it’s also an opportunity to begin moving forward, and to restore some of the joy and pride that has surrounded the event for nearly 50 years.

“In Gilroy, even though we appreciate garlic as much as anybody, this Garlic Festival is and mostly always has been about the people,” Bozzo said. “The Garlic Festival is a source of pride, community identity and camaraderie, and that’s what I’m looking forward to.”