Your Summer Playbook: What's New and What's Next in Colorado Springs This Season

Drive south on Nevada Avenue on a Tuesday morning in mid-July and you'll pass a line wrapped around a small brick building near the corner of Nevada and Ramona. That's Guthrie's, and the queue is for chicken fingers. A few miles north on the same road, a modern Italian dining room is finishing its first summer in a strip along North Nevada. Between them sits most of what's genuinely new in the Springs this year.

That's the pattern worth noticing. The summer 2026 "what's new" story in Colorado Springs isn't scattered across the map the way it usually is. It's mostly a Nevada Avenue story, with the event calendar downtown pulling everyone back to Acacia Park on Thursday nights. If you already live here, this is your shortlist. If you have out-of-town family visiting in August, this is your itinerary.

The Nevada Avenue axis

Start at the south end. Guthrie's, the Alabama-based, self-billed "original chicken finger specialist," held its grand opening for its first Colorado Springs location at 1520 S. Nevada Ave. on Tuesday, July 14, 2026. It's the first Guthrie's in the state, not just the city. The first 100 guests in line received one free Original Box Combo per week for 12 months, and the next 100 received one per month for 12 months. The rush should thin out by August, which is probably when you actually want to go.

Guthrie's lands in a market that was already saturated with poultry. It joins a seemingly always growing lineup of chicken-focused restaurants in Colorado Springs, including El Pollo Loco, which opened its first Colorado Springs location last fall, plus Angry Chicken, Birdcall, Buffalo Wild Wings, Chick-fil-A, Chicken Salad Chick, Daddy's Chicken Shack, Dave's Hot Chicken, KFC, Popeyes, Raising Cane's, and Slim Chickens. Whether the city needed another one is a matter for your dinner table. That it's here, and that the fingers are fresh rather than frozen, is settled.

Head north on the same road and the tone changes. A few of the openings worth building an evening around:

• Amore Italian Grille at 5278 N Nevada Ave, Ste 160. A new concept from the owners of Ambli Kitchen & Bar and Latin Social, with a menu of bold flavors and inventive spins on classic Italian dishes.
• Nana's Dim Sum & Dumpling at 1895 Democracy Point. Soup dumplings, bao buns, and pan-fried dumplings, with vegetarian, vegan, and gluten-free selections that make sharing easy.
• Codswallop at 3012 W Colorado Ave. Authentic British fish & chips and homemade pies, sister restaurant to The Brit Pub.
• Curry Culture at 162 Tracker Dr. Modern Indian in a fast-casual format with garlic naan, butter chicken, and tikka masala.
• Egg Lush at 1025 S Sierra Madre St. Brioche breakfast sandwiches, burritos, and bulgogi french fries, paired with banana cream or ube-flavored matcha lattes.
• Japon on the Westside. A new Japanese spot that soft-opened April 3 near Garden of the Gods Boulevard and Centennial Road.
• Night Ramen. Open nightly at 5 p.m., with starters like mushroom fries with miso honey mustard and bowls of Tokyo shoyu or spicy chicken paitan ramen.

The through-line isn't a cuisine. It's that every one of these openings picked a corridor already serving traffic, rather than betting on a new development pad. If you've been driving past a shell that looked closed for two years, check again this weekend.

What's landing before Labor Day

Three arrivals worth watching between now and September.

The one that will change your east-side rotation most: after opening a location in Castle Rock in late 2025, the Denver-based Homegrown Tap and Dough has begun remodeling the former east-side Jose Muldoon's at 5710 S. Carefree Circle into its first Springs location. Staff with Gastamo Group say the restaurant won't open until late summer. The Jose Muldoon's northeast location closed in January 2024 after 13 years of operation, with owners citing financial challenges. That corner has sat quiet for a while. It won't be quiet much longer.

The second, for anyone who was here before 2017: before Colorado Springs' dining scene renaissance of the past decade, The Blue Star was a beacon of approachable elevated cuisine in the Ivywild neighborhood, and its 2017 closure was a loss. Owner Joe Coleman is bringing The Blue Star back as a 2.0 version, and The Blue Star Group is eyeing a third quarter opening. In the meantime, they've been running intimate wine tasting events as a preview.

The third is for anyone with kids or grandkids in town: it's a big year for the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo as it celebrates 100 years, with celebrations crescendoing at the opening of a new Giraffe Center this summer. Free daytime admission ran on Jan. 1 with 25% discounts at zoo restaurants and gift shops, and a weeklong celebration is planned when the new giraffe center opens. If your calendar has any weekday flexibility, plan around it.

The event backbone

The summer calendar in the Springs has a rhythm most locals half-know. Here's the version with dates you can actually put in your phone.

A few notes worth having in your pocket. The Downtown Concert Series at Acacia Park is free and runs Thursday evenings, starting June 4. Pack a blanket, walk from a Tejon Street patio, done. Colorado Springs Comic Con at the Broadmoor World Arena includes special guests Mick Foley and Marisa Tomei, with full weekend passes starting at $134. Labor Day Lift Off returns to Memorial Park with dawn flights, twilight "glows," concerts, drone shows and carnival rides.

If you have exactly one guest weekend to plan, the underrated one is Cheyenne Mountain Zoo's centennial evening event. Moonlight on the Mountain runs 6–9:30 p.m. at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo for ages 21 and older, with food and drink samples, live music and a centennial drone show, at $79.75–$119.75. A drone show over the zoo is not something you'll get to do again.

For a lower-key Tuesday: Food Truck Tuesdays are back on the south side of Alamo Square Park, with ten food trucks serving meals, snacks, and desserts throughout the summer. It's a two-block walk from most of downtown's offices.

The one everyone missed

While the giraffe wing and the ramen counter were pulling headlines, the largest cultural venue to open in the city this year did so quietly in May. The General Bradley and Zita Hosmer Visitor Center at the U.S. Air Force Academy opened in May 2026, a 34,000-square-foot center with seven themed galleries, interactive displays, and a 105-foot tall glass atrium framing Pikes Peak.

If you've lived here for years, you've probably driven past the Academy's north gate more times than you can count without stopping. This is the summer to change that. Take a visiting friend, then loop through the Chapel while you're on base. It reads differently than the old center did.

What this all adds up to

If you handed a first-time visitor the standard tourist rundown, they'd get Garden of the Gods and Pikes Peak and a slice of Manitou. That version of the Springs is real, and it isn't wrong. It also isn't what your summer looks like as someone who lives here.

Your summer is a slow Sunday drive north on Nevada Avenue to try a new dumpling counter, a Thursday walk from Acacia Park to a Tejon Street patio, a July weekend at the rodeo, an August drone show over the zoo, and a September stop at a visitor center you finally have a reason to enter. The Springs isn't a static place this year. Nearly all the movement is happening within a fifteen-minute drive of downtown.

Which is worth knowing whether you're staying put, planning a housewarming for out-of-town family, or thinking about where in the region you actually want to spend the next chapter. If a conversation about that next chapter is somewhere on your list this summer, Lauren Trent knows this corridor block by block and is happy to walk it with you. Let's Connect.