Taste of Latino Festival returns to Ybor City

If you have been waiting for a good excuse to spend a Sunday in Ybor City, this is it. The 8th Annual Taste of Latino Festival, also known as the Taste of Tampa Festival, is back on Sunday, October 25, from noon to 6 p.m. at Centennial Park, and it is free and open to everyone. The date was moved to the 25th after the original October 11 date got rained out, so it is worth marking the calendar now rather than assuming it is already gone.

The festival is the official Hispanic Heritage Month celebration for Ybor City and the Tampa Bay area, put on by the Hispanic Cultural Resource Foundation, a bilingual nonprofit. It takes over Centennial Park at 1800 E. 8th Ave. in historic Ybor City, closing three city streets in the process. The food is the main draw, with dishes from Puerto Rico, Mexico, Colombia, Cuba, Spain, Peru, and Venezuela all in one place. Around that, there is live music, dance performances, a dancing competition, and a string of contests that are half the fun: the Empanada Smackdown, the Empanada and Taco Smackdown, the Cerveza Showdown, and the Sangria Contest. The 2026 Florida Latino & Latina Lideres Awards will be handed out on stage, and the Top Latino Chef Contest comes with a cash prize for the winner. The whole thing doubles as the closing ceremony for the 2025 Hispanic Heritage season, so it is a natural place to wrap up the month.

General admission is free, so you can walk in and browse the food and music without spending a dime. If you want to upgrade, there is a VIP area set up in the Ybor City Museum gardens, which comes with a DJ, dancing, live music on a private stage, seating, drinks, a private bathroom, and samples of the Cuban sandwiches the contestants are competing with. It is the more relaxed way to do the festival if you would rather sit and listen than stand and browse.

It is worth knowing who is behind it, too. The Hispanic CRF is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that has made a name for itself with a world record for the largest Cuban sandwich — 365 feet or more, with some sources pushing it to 383 — which they have used to feed hundreds of homeless people and veterans alongside partners like the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. They also put on the International Cuban Sandwich Festival every spring at the same park, so this is part of a larger, year-round effort to keep Ybor City's food scene going. For tickets, a full schedule, or to get in touch with the organizers, Jolie Gonzalez-Padilla and Victor Padilla, the place to go is TasteofLatino.com. Otherwise, just show up at Centennial Park on the 25th and follow the smell of empanadas.