🌴 What's Happening in Naples August 17 - 23

Tuesday is the primary, early voting closed Saturday, so if you have been putting it off, Tuesday is the whole ballgame. The rest of the week is peak August around here, which means the good stuff is indoors, on the water, or after dark. Ed Bassmaster runs four nights at Off The Hook, Friday brings a Loverboy tribute and an Aerosmith tribute stacked on the same stage at Founders Square, and Celebration Park has live music five nights running. Monday alone has three different trivia and bingo rooms going at once, which tells you something about how this town handles the slow season. Here is everything worth leaving the house for.

We recommend confirming with event hosts for complete details and current schedules

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🎸 Live Music and Nightlife

🎤 Get Lucky, a Loverboy Tribute, Plus Aerosmith Rocks
📅 Date: Friday, August 21, 2026
⏰ Time: 8:00 PM
📍 Location: South Street at Founders Square, 8845 Founders Square Drive, Naples, FL 34120
🎸 Details: Two tribute bands on one Friday night, which is more rock and roll than Naples usually offers in August. Get there early if you want a table anywhere near the stage. No cover listed, so the only cost is what you drink.

🎶 Live Music Five Nights at Celebration Park
📅 Date: Wednesday, August 19 through Sunday, August 23, 2026
📍 Location: Celebration Park, 2880 Becca Ave, Naples, FL 34112
🍹 Details: Matty Jollie Wednesday, Andy Moreillon Thursday, Chase Skinner both Friday and Saturday, Aura on Sunday, all of them 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM. Food trucks on the canal, cocktails, and nobody checking whether you dressed up. The most reliable weeknight plan in Bayshore.

🎙️ Open Mic Night at Food & Thought
📅 Date: Friday, August 21, 2026
⏰ Time: 6:00 PM
📍 Location: 2132 Tamiami Trail North, Naples, FL 34102
🎵 Details: Organic cafe by day, open mic room by night. Bring an instrument or bring nothing and just watch. Small room, friendly crowd, and the coffee is genuinely good.

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🍽️ Food and Drink

🍔 Mercato Burger Battle
📅 Date: Now through Monday, August 31, 2026
📍 Location: Mercato, 9110 Strada Place, Naples, FL 34108
🥇 Details: Restaurants across Mercato are each running a competition burger and the public votes on the winner. You eat, you vote, somebody gets bragging rights until next August. Give yourself two visits, three if you are committed.

🥂 Sunday Beachside Brunch at HB's on the Gulf
📅 Date: Every Sunday, including Sunday, August 23, 2026
📍 Location: 801 Gulf Shore Boulevard North, Naples, FL 34102
🌊 Details: New Sunday brunch service right on the sand at the old Beach Club property, which is about as good as a Naples Sunday gets. Off season pricing and off season crowds, so the table you cannot get in February is sitting empty now. Check the listing for exact service hours before you go.

👨‍👩‍👧 Family and Weekend Mornings

🎬 Films Al Fresco, The Secret Life of Pets 2
📅 Date: Tuesday, August 18, 2026
⏰ Time: At dusk, around 8:15 PM
📍 Location: Mercato, 9110 Strada Place, Naples, FL 34108
🍿 Details: Free outdoor movie on the lawn, third Tuesday of every month, and the animated one this month means the kids will actually sit still. Bring chairs or a blanket because seating is whatever you carry in. Grab dinner at Mercato first and walk over.

🧺 Third Street South Farmers Market
📅 Date: Saturday, August 22, 2026
⏰ Time: 7:30 AM to 11:30 AM
📍 Location: 3rd Street South between Broad Ave S and 13th Ave S, Naples, FL 34102
🍅 Details: Every Saturday, year round, and in August the early start is not optional. Produce, seafood, bread, flowers, and the usual crowd of people who clearly did this before breakfast. Go at 7:30 and you will be home before it gets ugly outside.

🌺 Birding and W.O.N.D.E.R. Family Morning at Naples Botanical Garden
📅 Date: Monday, August 17, 2026
⏰ Time: Birding 8:00 AM to 10:00 AM, W.O.N.D.E.R. family program 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM
📍 Location: Naples Botanical Garden, 4820 Bayshore Drive, Naples, FL 34112
🦜 Details: Summer hours run 8:00 AM to 2:00 PM daily and adult tickets are $27, with kids 17 and under free, which makes this one of the better family deals in town right now. Note the Garden is closed Tuesdays through September, so Monday or Wednesday it is. Get there at opening and you beat both the heat and the crowd.

🏃 GCR Youth Team Cross Country Season Opens
📅 Date: Monday, August 17, 2026
⏰ Time: 5:30 PM
📍 Location: Naples High School, 1100 Golden Gate Parkway, Naples, FL 34102
👟 Details: Gulf Coast Runners youth team kicks off the 2026 cross country season with the biggest turnout on this week's calendar for anything involving kids and sneakers. Open to new runners, and the coaches sort by pace so nobody gets buried. Bring water, it is still August.

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😂 Comedy, Trivia and Bar Games

🤣 Ed Bassmaster at Off The Hook Comedy Club
📅 Date: Thursday, August 20 through Sunday, August 23, 2026
⏰ Time: 7:00 PM Thursday, 6:30 PM and 8:30 PM Friday, 6:00 PM and 8:00 PM Saturday
📍 Location: Off The Hook Comedy Club, 2500 Vanderbilt Beach Road, Naples, FL 34109
🎭 Details: The character comic with roughly a billion views on the internet, doing multiple shows a night in a room that seats a few hundred. Tickets run about $30 general admission at the door price and climb from there depending on the show. The late Friday and Saturday sets are the loose ones.

🎵 Twisted Bingo, Music Bingo Naples
📅 Date: Monday, August 17, 2026
⏰ Time: 7:00 PM
📍 Location: Dylan's Drafthouse, Naples, FL
🍺 Details: Bingo except the squares are songs, so you win by knowing the first four seconds of things you forgot you knew. Free to play and the beer list is the real draw. A decent way to make a Monday not feel like a Monday.

🧠 Monday Trivia on Marco Island
📅 Date: Monday, August 17, 2026
⏰ Time: 7:00 PM
📍 Location: Paddy Murphy's Irish Pub, Marco Island, FL
🍀 Details: Island trivia in an Irish pub, which is exactly as low pressure as it sounds. Bring one friend who reads the news and one who watches sports and you are basically set. Off season means you can actually get a table.

🍕 Monday Night Trivia in Estero
📅 Date: Monday, August 17, 2026
⏰ Time: 7:00 PM
📍 Location: Naples Flatbread Kitchen & Bar, Estero, FL
🧀 Details: Third trivia room of the night if the first two are full or too far. Flatbread, beer, and questions that get harder after the second round. Worth the drive up if you live north of Immokalee Road.

🌿 Outdoors and Wild Florida

📷 Essentials of Digital Photography at Rookery Bay
📅 Date: Saturday, August 22, 2026
⏰ Time: 12:30 PM
📍 Location: Rookery Bay Environmental Learning Center, 300 Tower Road, Naples, FL 34113
🐦 Details: A workshop for people whose camera has more settings than they have ever touched. Indoors and air conditioned, with 110,000 acres of estuary outside to practice on afterward. Register through the Rookery Bay site, spots are limited and the Learning Center closes all of September for maintenance.

💼 Community and Business

🗳️ Florida Primary Election
📅 Date: Tuesday, August 18, 2026
⏰ Time: Polls open 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM
📍 Location: Your assigned precinct, lookup at CollierVotes.gov
🇺🇸 Details: Early voting ended Saturday, so Tuesday is the last chance. Florida runs a closed primary, meaning you vote your own party except in universal contests, and photo ID is required at the polls. Vote by mail ballots have to physically reach the Supervisor of Elections office by 7:00 PM Tuesday, and dropping one in a mailbox that morning does not count.

🎯 Mission: Possible 2, The Power of Purpose
📅 Date: Thursday, August 20, 2026
⏰ Time: 8:00 AM
📍 Location: Hilton Naples, 5111 Tamiami Trail North, Naples, FL 34103
🤝 Details: The best attended listing on this week's Naples calendar by a wide margin, and it starts at eight in the morning, which tells you the crowd means it. A morning built around purpose driven business and community work. Register on the listing, because walk up space at these things evaporates.

🌸 Gulf Coast Orchid Alliance Monthly Meeting
📅 Date: Thursday, August 20, 2026
⏰ Time: 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM
📍 Location: Naples Conference Center, 1455 Pine Ridge Road, Naples, FL 34109
🪴 Details: Thanh Nguyen of Springwater Orchids drives over from Melbourne to talk orchid care and sell plants he grew himself. Free to attend and newcomers are welcome, which is not true of every hobby club in this county. Bring cash if you think you might come home with a plant.

☀️ Marco Island Sunrise Rotary Wake Up Speaker Series
📅 Date: Thursday, August 20, 2026
⏰ Time: 7:15 AM
📍 Location: Stonewalls Restaurant, 551 S Collier Blvd, Marco Island, FL 34145
⚽ Details: This week's speaker is Chris Johnson from FC Naples, talking about building a pro soccer club in a market that did not have one three years ago. Breakfast meeting, open to visitors, done before most people start work. Worth it if you have ever wondered how that team actually came together.

🩸 NCH Blood Drive at Mercato
📅 Date: Friday, August 21, 2026
📍 Location: NCH Bloodmobile at Mercato, 9110 Strada Place, Naples, FL 34108
❤️ Details: Twenty minutes of your Friday and the local hospital system keeps its supply up through the slowest month of the year. Bring an ID and eat something first. Walk ups are fine.

⚠️ Please verify event details and availability with the respective venues or organizers, as schedules may change.

📰 What's Happening in Naples

🔗 The Carlisle Naples Sells for $148.75 Million
Healthpeak Properties of Irvine, California bought the 350 unit senior community off Orange Blossom Drive and Airport-Pulling Road from a Harbert Management and Senior Resource Group venture that paid $101.5 million for it in 2021, as part of a five property, $455 million portfolio deal.

🔗 Collier Voters Will Decide Whether Hotel Guests Pay More
The tourist development tax on hotel rooms and short term rentals would rise from 5 percent to 6 percent if voters approve it on November 3, and local business groups are split on whether the extra penny helps or hurts.

🔗 The County Board Hit Pause on the New Transit Contract
Commissioners delayed approving a new Collier Area Transit operating deal while more than 150 contract workers at the East Naples facility face layoffs when the seven year agreement expires in late September.

🔗 Royal Palm Academy Moves Out of Its Modulars After 27 Years
A $10 million, two story middle school building for grades four through eight replaces the portable classrooms the school has used since 1998.

🔗 A Private Motorsports Club Is Proposed for 542 Acres in Eastern Collier
Naples entrepreneurs want to turn a long idle automotive testing site into a members only racing club with driving circuits, resort amenities and up to 100 homes, a plan the Conservancy of Southwest Florida and area tribal members are fighting over panther habitat and water quality.

🔗 Collier Puts $100,000 Into a New Artificial Reef Off Naples
The county secured the money for concrete reef modules to be dropped about 10 miles offshore, expanding habitat that local anglers and divers have been asking for.

🔗 North Collier Fire Put a Mobile Health Unit on the Road
The MH-45 unit, branded We Care, runs Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. across the district's 264 square miles and responds without lights or sirens to low acuity 911 calls that dispatchers flag, freeing engines for real emergencies.

🔗 Marco Island Holds Its Tax Rate Flat With Amendment 3 Coming
The city kept the millage steady even as staff warned that Amendment 3 could pull $3 million to $4 million a year out of city revenue within five years.

🔗 The State Puts $350,000 Into The Immokalee Foundation
The money goes toward workforce development programs that route Immokalee students into trades, health care and business careers instead of out of the county.

🔗 Gulfstream Homes Backs the Boys and Girls Club of Collier County
The builder is sponsoring the 22nd annual FORE-the-Kids golf tournament, which funds more than 100,000 meals, full day summer camps and expansion at the Bolch Campus in Immokalee for an organization serving over 4,600 kids a year.

🔗 Two Teens Face Felony Charges After Riding E-Motos Through a Naples Target
The Collier County Sheriff's Office says the pair rode electric motorbikes through the store aisles and left about $2,500 in damage behind them.

🔗 Water Quality and Safety Top the List for Marco Island Voters
Residents heading into Tuesday's District 22 race say canal and coastal water quality plus public safety are what they are actually voting on, ahead of everything else on the ballot.

🔗 Vote by Mail Requests Fell Sharply Across Florida
Collier saw the same statewide slide in mail ballot requests that followed the new law requiring voters to reapply, pushing more of the turnout into early voting sites and Tuesday's precincts.

🔗 A Golden Gate Estates Family Is Still Waiting on a Missing 16 Year Old
The Collier County Sheriff's Office is still searching for the teenager who walked away from her home early on a Friday morning, and her family is asking anyone with information to call.

🔗 The World's Deadliest Animal Lives Right Here
A look at mosquitoes in Collier County heading into the wettest stretch of the year, what the district is spraying for, and why the ones that bite at dawn and dusk are the ones to worry about.