Thousands of people packed Hippie Hill by 11 a.m. Sunday, well before the 4:20 mark, spreading blankets across Golden Gate Park’s grass and staking out prime spots with portable speakers already running at full tilt.

San Francisco’s annual April gathering has been happening long enough that nobody blinks at it anymore. California’s licensed cannabis market turned 9 years old in 2026, and the mood at Hippie Hill reflected exactly that: dispensaries operate in the open now, enforcement isn’t lurking at the tree line, and the whole thing feels less like a protest and more like a municipal holiday that smells distinctly of terpenes.

That shift didn’t thin the crowd. It did the opposite.

Vendors worked the paths near the Panhandle entrance, moving pre-rolls, tinctures, and CBD beverages to a crowd that wasn’t in a hurry to go anywhere. Several Bay Area dispensaries set up outreach tables staffed by people who could actually answer questions. A number of attendees said they’d never bought from a licensed shop and wanted to understand the difference. That kind of on-the-ground education is something the Cannabis Trade Federation has pushed for in public spaces, arguing it’s one of the few tools that can chip away at the illicit market.

One woman who gave her name as Mariana told California Bud she’d been making the trip to Hippie Hill since 2009, which means she’s watched it go from something vaguely clandestine to something you’d read about in a city events calendar. “It used to feel like you were getting away with something,” she said. “Now it’s more like a farmer’s market that smells really good.”

She’s not wrong about the market comparison. The vendor stretch near the Panhandle wouldn’t have looked out of place next to a sourdough booth or a ceramics stall. The difference is that a decade ago, those same vendors would’ve been watching for police.

The festive atmosphere, though, didn’t crowd out the serious conversation happening around it. Advocates set up near the main stage and spent most of the day pointing to numbers that complicate the celebration. According to reporting on the event, Data from the Department of Cannabis Control shows the illicit market still accounts for roughly 30 percent of total cannabis sales statewide. That figure undercuts the tax base that licensed cultivators and retail shops count on, and it’s been stubbornly persistent even as the licensed industry has matured.

Social equity work was visible throughout the day. Several organizations used the crowd to push for faster expungement processing for people carrying prior cannabis convictions, a cause that’s moved through state channels at a pace that frustrates even its most patient supporters. One group collected signatures for reforms targeting licensing fee structures, arguing that low-income applicants can’t realistically front 20 or more separate fees that together can reach into the tens of thousands of dollars before a license is ever granted. A different organization distributed materials about 4 state-level bills they said would open the market to more applicants without adequate capital.

It wasn’t only petitions and pamphlets out there.

Music ran from the morning onward. Food trucks lined up down Fell Street. Near the tennis courts, a group had rigged up a turntable, a gas-powered generator, and what looked like a custom dab rig built to roughly the scale of a household appliance. Older San Franciscans, people in their 60s and 70s who don’t need the holiday explained to them, sat beside college students and families who showed up out of what seemed like genuine curiosity. The crowd that fills Hippie Hill in 2026 doesn’t look like any single demographic. It looks like the city.

Mariana stuck around past 4 p.m., she said. She wasn’t planning to leave early.