🎉 The Naperville FunTimes

Your Weekly Family Fun Guide

Issue #27  •  Friday, September 11, 2026

Happy Friday, Naperville families! 🍂

First normal weekend since school started, and it’s a good one. Saturday hands you nine hours of free food, music and dancing from about twenty countries in Central Park. Sunday has a race so short your six-year-old will finish it, and 300 tables of model trains twenty minutes up the road. Nothing here needs a whole day — pick two and still be home for laundry.

📅 This Week’s Top 3 Family Picks

Sister Cities International Festival — Nine Hours of Free Food, Dancing & Twenty Countries 🌍

Naperville Sister Cities runs this one every year and it is still one of the most underrated free days on the calendar. Central Park fills up with Slovak, Hispanic, Irish, Lithuanian, Indian and Chinese performers, plus food and craft booths from restaurants and community groups around town. This year the Naperville Municipal Band and the Men’s Glee Club are on the schedule too, tied to the country’s 250th. About 800 people come through, which is big enough to feel like an event and small enough that you can actually find your kid. The whole thing sits right behind Nichols Library, so the Riverwalk and downtown are a two-minute walk if anyone needs a reset.

The Judd-a-thon — a 0.1K Race, in Costume, That Takes About Ninety Seconds 🏃

A 0.1K is 328 feet. That is the entire race. It starts at 10:01 AM because of course it does, and it has been running for thirteen years now out of the VFW post on Jackson. Costumes are encouraged and there are prizes for the best one as well as for the top finishers, which in a race this length is mostly a matter of who trips. Every dollar goes to the VFW National Home for Children, which supports military families and their kids. Registration is $25 a head the morning of — steep-ish for a family of four, so the honest read is this: register the kid who will love the bib and the T-shirt, and let everyone else cheer from the curb for nothing.

Great Midwest Train Show — 300 Tables of Trains, and Kids Under 12 Get In Free 🚆

This has been the country’s biggest monthly model train show for over fifty years, and it lands in Wheaton one Sunday most months. Three buildings, more than 300 tables of locomotives, track, buildings, tiny trees and parts, plus outdoor sellers if the weather holds. The part that matters for kids: there are free test tracks where trains are actually running, not just sitting in boxes with “do not touch” signs. Twenty-five minutes from Naperville, indoors, and a kid can wander it happily for an hour. Bring a little cash — a used boxcar runs a few dollars and makes a very good souvenir.

🍽️ Kids Eat Free This Week!

The first one is good this Sunday (and Mondays). The second is Tuesday, and worth planning around. Adult meal purchase required at both, dine-in.

One more thing worth knowing: Irish Fest is next weekend in the same park, and advance tickets are two for $15 only through tonight — kids 12 and under are free either way. Buy them before you close this email and you’ve saved yourself ten bucks and a decision.

See you at the finish line,

The Naperville FunTimes Team 🧡