Austin Record Convention: the US's largest vinyl sale

If you spend your weekends digging through crates, the biggest date on your calendar is coming up. The Austin Record Convention, better known as the Austin Record Show, returns for its fall edition on October 24 and 25 at the Palmer Events Center, and it is widely billed as the largest sale of recorded music in the United States. The numbers are hard to ignore: more than one million items available at any one time, from 78s, 45s and LPs to CDs, cassettes, posters and music memorabilia, with hundreds of dealers from across the U.S. and Europe filling 40,000 square feet of floor space. This year's edition runs over 300 tables.

For a first-timer, the most important thing to understand is the difference between the two ways to get in. General admission is $5 per person, which gets you in at 10:00 AM on Saturday and Sunday and is valid for both days. If you are serious about the hunt, the Early Shopper admission is $30 and buys you a lot more time: you can get in after dealer load-in on Friday, at 8:00 AM on Saturday, and at 9:00 AM on Sunday. Tickets are not on sale yet, but you can leave your email on the convention's site to get notified when they go live.

The schedule is worth a quick look before you commit. Friday is setup day, with doors opening at 8:00 AM for dealer load-in and early shoppers admitted at 10:00 AM, closing at 5:00 PM. Saturday opens at 8:00 AM for dealers and early shoppers, with general admission starting at 10:00 AM and the show closing at 6:00 PM. Sunday opens at 9:00 AM, with general admission at 10:00 AM and a 5:00 PM close. Between the two days, you have plenty of time to work through the crates.

Parking is the one detail that can trip you up. The Palmer Center / Long Center Parking Garage is $12, four stories with 1,200 spaces and two entrances on Riverside Drive and Barton Springs Road, and it has been cashless since June 1. Clearance is 7'2", rising to 8'2" on the first level. If that fills up, the One Texas Center Parking Garage is the designated overflow at $12 a vehicle.

There is more here than just buying records. The 2026 show includes live performances by artists from Spaceflight Records, a non-profit, multi-award-winning label based here in Austin, and a silent auction benefiting the SIMS Foundation, which has provided mental health and substance use recovery services to musicians and music industry professionals since 1995. The foundation has served more than 25,000 industry professionals through more than 300,000 sessions and has put $50 million into the emotional wellness of the music community.

A bit of history puts the scale in perspective. The first show was held in 1981 at the Zilker Clubhouse, and it spent 15 years at the Palmer Auditorium, now the Long Center, before returning to the current Palmer Events Center in the early 2000s as vinyl popularity regained momentum. Doug Hanners and his son Nathan Hanners have kept it running since, and it has grown into the massive marketplace it is today. Whether you are hunting for a specific rare press or just happy to spend a weekend among a million records, it is hard to find a better place to do it than the Live Music Capital of the World.