Is trick-or-treating becoming a thing of the past?
If you buy the giant bag of candy, turn on the porch light, and spend Halloween waiting for a doorbell that barely rings, it’s a fair question. Where did everybody go?
But a quiet porch isn’t a national head count. And the evidence we have for 2026 doesn’t justify declaring trick-or-treating dead.
Here in Colorado Springs, there’s another reason to talk about it: iSharing, the family location-sharing app, put the city in sixth place in its September 2026 trick-or-treating safety index, with a score of 86. That’s an interesting local result. It also needs a little explaining before anybody treats it as permission to stop worrying about traffic.
People are still planning to hand out candy
The National Retail Federation’s 2026 survey, conducted by Prosper Insights & Analytics, says 74% of consumers plan to celebrate Halloween. Handing out candy, at 61%, is the most popular activity listed.
The survey asked 7,889 consumers about their plans September 1–9. These are intentions, not a count of children who will knock on doors October 31. They also don’t tell us whether your particular street will be busy.
Still, that is a lot of people planning to participate in the candy part of Halloween. “Nobody does this anymore” is a bigger claim than the evidence supports.
There’s room for two things to be true: the tradition can still matter to plenty of families, and your own Halloween can feel very different from the one you remember.
Colorado Springs still has places to go for candy
There are already several options on the local calendar, including events before Halloween itself:
- Boo at Briargate: Visit Colorado Springs lists an Alice in Wonderland-themed event at The Promenade Shops at Briargate on October 24, 2026, from 3–5 p.m., with trick-or-treating at participating retailers.
- Sensory-friendly trick-or-treating: Resonate’s event listing has a free October 24 event from 3–5 p.m. at 2906 Beacon Street, with trick-or-treat stations and other fall activities.
- Superhero Trunk or Treat: Diversus Health has a free community event scheduled October 31 from 10 a.m.–2 p.m. at 179 S. Parkside Drive, with trick-or-treating, pumpkin decorating, and more.
Check the organizers’ current listings before heading out, since event details can change.
Those events show families have choices. They do not establish that trunk-or-treats are replacing neighborhood rounds, or that children who attend one won’t also go door to door. We don’t have local attendance data that answers that.
But if you’re standing at your front door wondering where the costumes are, the question worth asking may be where families are gathering, rather than whether they’ve given up on Halloween entirely.
What Colorado Springs’ sixth-place ranking actually means
According to iSharing’s published workbook, the index compares 41 cities from a starting list of the 50 largest U.S. cities by population, excluding places without comparable data for every metric. Colorado Springs appears sixth in the final table, behind Omaha, Virginia Beach, Boston, El Paso, and Columbus.
It is a branded comparison of broad safety and city-layout indicators. It is not a government safety designation or a study counting Halloween-specific injuries in Colorado Springs.
Here are the inputs iSharing reports for Colorado Springs:
| Input | Study value | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Average annual metro-area pedestrian fatalities per 100,000 residents, 2020–2024 | 1.61 | 30% |
| Reported violent crimes per 100,000 residents, labeled 2024 | 716 | 25% |
| Reported robberies per 100,000 residents, labeled 2024 | 78 | 15% |
| Population density, people per square mile | 2,463 | 10% |
| Walk Score | 36 | 10% |
| Numbeo Safety Index | 58 | 10% |
Source: iSharing’s September 2026 methodology. Percentages are the formula’s weights, not probabilities of safety. Robbery is also included in violent crime.
The workbook normalizes the inputs, applies those weights, then rescales the combined results from 1 to 99. Lower crime, fatality rates, and population density help a city’s score; higher walkability and perceived safety help it too. Robbery gets its own weight even though it is also included in violent crime.
A score of 86 does not mean an 86% chance of being safe. It means Colorado Springs scored relatively well under this company’s formula, among the cities it included.
A citywide number can’t pick your Halloween route
The supporting sources matter here. Smart Growth America’s Dangerous by Design 2026 report confirms the Colorado Springs metro-area figure of 1.61 average annual pedestrian deaths per 100,000 people for 2020–2024. That denominator is residents, not pedestrians, and the data covers the whole year rather than Halloween night.
Walk Score confirms the city’s score of 36, which it classifies as car-dependent. Its methodology emphasizes walking access to amenities and street-layout measures. It does not certify a candy route as safe.
The Numbeo component comes from website visitors’ survey responses, so it reflects perceptions rather than police-recorded incidents. The workbook attributes the crime inputs to FBI Crime Data Explorer and its population inputs to World Population Review; the table above presents those as the study’s reported values, not independently audited local statistics.
The index mixes city-level inputs with metro-area traffic data and different reporting periods. It also assumes lower density is favorable. None of that tells a parent whether a particular crossing has good lighting, whether drivers will slow down, or how busy one block will be.
Sixth place is worth noticing. It is not a promise of a worry-free night.
Keep the fun. Make a real plan.
Safe Kids Worldwide recommends adults join children under 12, use sidewalks and crosswalks, and add reflective materials and flashlights or glow sticks. Older children who are ready to go without adult supervision should stay in familiar, well-lit areas and travel in groups. Drivers need to slow down and watch carefully for children.
Those are useful decisions whether your city lands sixth or thirty-sixth.
And if what you miss is the neighborhood version of Halloween, it’s reasonable to want to keep that going. Talk to neighbors about who is participating. Decide on a route. Give families a reason to know your block is part of the fun.
Need an idea for the costume part? Our 2026 Halloween costume guide has characters and group ideas to get you started.
There’s candy at community events, candy at participating shops, and plenty of people still planning to hand it out. We can make room for all of that without holding a funeral for the porch light.
