Taipei did not empty for Mid-Autumn. The 20th Taipei Jazz Festival, staged by the Department of Cultural Affairs and Taipei Music Center, opened on 4 September and runs through 11 October. Sets move between indoor halls and outdoor stages. Check the day’s venue before you leave the house; the festival is citywide, not a single tent in Daan Park.
The other crowd this weekend is commercial and local. Taipei’s Shopping District Carnival occupies Taipei Expo Park from 26 to 28 September, the Saturday-to-Monday stretch of the break. Shops from commercial streets across the city put up stalls, food and short performances. Entry is free. MRT Yuanshan on the Red Line is the stop. Late afternoon is the peak. Go earlier if you want to walk the aisles without a stroller pile-up.
Neither event requires an English ticket account. Jazz festival paid shows sell through the usual local platforms; outdoor stages are often free and first-come. Bring a transit card and cash for food stalls. Expo Park has toilets and shade. It also has very little grass left once the tents go up.
If indoor culture is the point, Huashan 1914 keeps its usual warehouse shows and design markets through the holiday; the calendar is at huashan1914.com. Many smaller galleries in the east district close Friday and reopen Saturday.
What not to do is treat the jazz festival as a drop-in picnic with a portable speaker. Stages have their own volume. The carnival is a shopping street compressed into a park, not a concert. For actual tickets this fortnight, LANY plays Taipei Arena on 26 September and several club dates fill Legacy and Clapper. Those are separate nights with separate door policies.
Use travel.taipei for the city’s own listings. If a page is only in Chinese, the date and the MRT stop are still readable.