GTA Farmers' Markets: Which Ones Run Year-Round

Five farmers' markets in the Greater Toronto Area run every week of the year, and all five are in Toronto: the Saturday Farmers' Market at St. Lawrence Market, Evergreen Brick Works, The Stop's market at Wychwood Barns, Dufferin Grove and Sorauren. Three of the five publish a different winter building, and a fourth moves indoors without saying where, which is why a January trip planned from a summer listing so often ends at an empty park. Every other market checked here (in Brampton, Mississauga, Vaughan, Markham, Oakville, Burlington, Newmarket and Durham Region) publishes a season that ends in October or November. Uxbridge alone keeps going past that, and only fortnightly.

"Year-round" means three different things

Read a market's own site closely and the phrase splits into three, and the difference is the whole point of this page.

Genuinely 52 weeks. Same day, same hours, every week, with only a change of shelter. The Stop's market is the clean example: every Saturday, 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., at 601 Christie Street all year, with one exception it publishes itself: "open every Saturday of the year unless we fall on a statutory holiday, such as Christmas Day or New Year's Day", outdoors along the Barns' walkways from May to October and inside the main Barn from November to April.

Year-round in the banner, with a gap in the calendar. A market can call itself year-round and still publish a schedule with ten weeks missing. Leslieville is the case worth knowing about.

Reduced winter schedule. The market keeps going but drops from weekly to fortnightly or to a handful of dated events. This is the category most listicles quietly fold into "year-round", and the one most likely to waste your Sunday.

The five that really do run all year

St. Lawrence Market

The South Market is the daily building: more than 60 specialty vendors, open Tuesday to Friday 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., Saturday 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sunday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., closed Mondays. The Farmers' Market is a separate thing in the North building across Front Street, and it happens on Saturdays only, from 5 a.m. to 3 p.m.. Turning up on a Wednesday for the farmers' market means shopping the South Market instead.

The North building is the part of this that changed. The old one was demolished and the replacement hosted its first Saturday Farmers' Market on April 5, 2025, with a grand opening event on May 10, 2025. Descriptions written before that date are out of date.

The market's hours page publishes no season for the Farmers' Market at all (just "Saturdays") and adds a footnote that it "will operate with regular hours of operation throughout the winter holiday season." One date is genuinely unclear: the 2026 holiday table lists Saturday, December 26 (Boxing Day) as closed, and the Saturday times elsewhere in that table match the South Market's 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. rather than the Farmers' Market's. I checked the footnote, the table's own times and the line stating that regular hours resume on Saturday, January 2, 2027; none says which governs Boxing Day. Phone ahead before that trip.

One concrete saving: on Saturdays, market shoppers get $1.00 per hour for the first two hours at the Green P St. Lawrence Garage at Lower Jarvis Street and The Esplanade. That rate is Saturdays only and valid from 5 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Evergreen Brick Works

Evergreen calls this Toronto's biggest year-round farmers market, and its own FAQ is unambiguous about the move: outdoors under the Pavilions from May to October, indoors in the TD Future Cities Centre from November to April, at 550 Bayview Avenue.

Its hours are the one thing the page does not settle. The main description says Saturdays, 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., with the local food court open until 2 p.m.; the summary block lower down the same page says every Saturday, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Nothing on the page reconciles the two, so arriving after 9 a.m. is safe under either reading.

The Stop's Farmers' Market

The most predictable of the five. Every Saturday, 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., 601 Christie Street, all year. The only change across the calendar is that from November to April you walk into the main Barn instead of along the walkways outside it.

Dufferin Grove Organic Farmers' Market

Thursdays, 3 to 7 p.m., all year, at 875 Dufferin Street. Note that the market's own site now places it at the New Dufferin Grove Clubhouse at the northwest corner of the park, while the long-running park website still describes the market as running around the rinkhouse in summer, on the rinkpad in fall and in and around the rinkhouse in winter. The clubhouse description is the current one; the rinkhouse description predates the park's rebuild.

Sorauren Farmers' Market

Mondays, 3 to 7 p.m., including statutory holidays, the only Monday market on this list. The outdoor season is Sorauren Park, 50 Wabash Avenue, and the market's events page confirms an indoor season by announcing the move outdoors in early May. What its website does not do is name the winter venue. Since the market's own pages do not publish that address, check its social feed in November rather than assuming last year's room.

Year-round on the banner, closed in January

The Leslieville Farmers' Market runs Sundays, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., and describes itself as local and year-round. Its published 2026 season is three blocks: March 1 to May 3 indoors at 1470 Gerrard Street East, May 10 to October 25 outdoors at Greenwood Park, and November 1 to December 20 indoors at Gerrard Street again.

Add those up and there is no market between December 21 and the end of February, about ten weeks. That is not a criticism of the market, which publishes its dates plainly. It is a warning about the word: a market can run three seasons out of four and still be shut on the January Sunday you were counting on.

Reduced winter schedule: what fortnightly looks like

Uxbridge is the clearest example in the GTA of a market that keeps going in winter without keeping its weekly rhythm. The outdoor market runs Sundays, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., May through October, at 14 Victoria Street. After that it becomes a list of dated events: the market's own page gives 2026 holiday markets from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on November 1, 6, 13 and 22 and December 6 and 13, at the Uxbridge Arena, 291 Brock Street West. The Region of Durham separately describes winter and spring markets at the Uxbridge Arena Hall "every other Sunday."

Six dated markets and a fortnightly winter run are real, but not the same as walking out on any Sunday and finding the market open. A listing that files this under "year-round" has told you the wrong thing.

The 905: everything closes, and when next season is announced

Across Peel, York, Halton and Durham, every market checked here publishes an end date in October or November; the table above carries the dates. The details a table cannot hold: Brampton closes Main Street North to traffic from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. on market days, Port Credit sets up in the library parking lot at 20 Lakeshore Road East, Woodbridge Village moved this year to the Al Palladini Centre, and Newmarket runs at Riverwalk Commons.

Halton runs longest. Oakville's Dorval Crossing Civitan market, the town's oldest, goes from May until the end of November. Burlington Centre Lions runs May 20 to October 24, 2026, with an extra Wednesday evening market from 2:30 to 7:30 p.m. between June 3 and September 30.

Burlington is also a good lesson in whose page to trust. The Lions Club, which runs the market, gives the hours as 7 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.; the Farmers' Markets Ontario directory entry for the same market says 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Both are current pages. The operator's own site is the one to plan around, and the directory is a lead to verify rather than an answer.

Most 905 markets confirm the following year in spring, through the host BIA, city or service club. If you are reading this in February, next year's 905 dates almost certainly are not out: check whichever of the five Toronto markets suits your day of the week instead.

What "farmers' market" actually guarantees in Ontario

Less than most shoppers assume, and more than nothing.

Ontario law does define the term. Ontario Regulation 493/17, the Food Premises regulation under the Health Protection and Promotion Act, defines a "farmers' market food vendor" as the operator of a stall at a central location where a group of stall operators meets to sell products including farm products, baked goods and preserved foods, "and at which the majority of the persons operating the stalls or other food premises are producers of farm products who are primarily selling or offering for sale their own products." The export I read carries the consolidation period "From January 1, 2025 to the e-Laws currency date."

Two conditions travel with that definition, and both matter. First, the test is a majority: a market can satisfy it with just over half its stalls run by producers, which leaves plenty of room for resellers alongside them. Second, the regulation uses the definition for one purpose only: section 2(2)(c) exempts farmers' market food vendors from the regulation's requirements. The phrase appears exactly twice in the whole regulation (in that definition and in that exemption), so it is a public-health boundary line, not a consumer guarantee and not something checked at the market entrance.

If you want to know that the person selling you tomatoes grew them, the thing to look for is the MyPick logo. Under Farmers' Markets Ontario's MyPick Verified Local Farmer program, the organisation visits participating farms and verifies the products covered by the certification, so the logo at a stand means someone has been to that farm. It is voluntary, so plenty of genuine growers do not carry it. But where it is displayed, it has been checked.

For scale: the City of Toronto counts more than 160 community-based public markets. Five of them run every week of the year.