The Toronto Night Market has been popping up in various locations across the city for years, becoming a sort of city institution. And now it’s found a permanent location.
The permanent version of the Toronto Night Market opened in late August at 833 Queen St. W., with a pay-what-you-can vendor model and a chic interior that includes checkered flooring and spray-painted walls. The space is also now home to a music venue called Mudd Club, which will spotlight local musicians as well as offering karaoke nights (costumes are expected and encouraged) on Wednesdays, offering tattoos, food and drinks late into the night.
One of the founders, Brianna Kinnaird, is a night market veteran; she opened up iterations of one in New York City and has been slowly expanding on the concept she originally dreamed up while working at No Frills when she was 18.
“Toronto Night Market was originally an art show called The Third Act. The third act is the act of the movie where the resolution occurs. The show’s purpose was to emphasize art as a tool for overcoming life’s obstacles,” she wrote in an Instagram post last year about the market. “Slowly it grew to include small businesses and I changed the name but feared commercializing it would water down the whole reason why I started it.
“This past weekend really showed me that it’s right on track,” the post continued. “I love what we have built, what we had to get through to get here, and where we are going.”
The permanent location for the market seems like a natural next step for a concept that began as a single-day event back in 2023. It turned into a night market in 2024, then a three-day market, then a month-long pop-up in 2025 — and now, finally, a year-round, brick-and-mortar shop.
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The permanent version of the Toronto Night Market also allows for expanded hours in addition to more space for vendors and more room for installations and artwork. The shopping aspect of the space is open from 1 p.m. to 8 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays, from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. on Fridays, from 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. on Saturdays, and 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Sundays.
The night market angle also helps to set it apart compared to other boutiques, vintage shops and market pop-ups that are usually only open during daylight and close by early evening. There’s clearly an appetite for after-hours shopping; Dundas West has played host to Seconds Night Crawl, where vintage shops stay open late into the night for shoppers to browse and sip, for two years now.
The Toronto Night Market is open at 833 Queen St. W. in the Trinity Bellwoods neighbourhood.
