Seventeen artists will paint 16 new large-scale murals along the Metropolitan Branch Trail starting Friday, Sept. 11, as the NoMa Business Improvement District's annual NoMa in Color festival returns for its 11th year.

The week-long event runs through Friday, Sept. 18, replacing murals installed during the 2024 festival on the WMATA-owned wall bordering the trail. Thirteen of the 16 new works will go up along that stretch. The current standing collection in the neighborhood sits at 73 murals, one of the largest outdoor public art collections in the region, according to the NoMa BID.

The festival caps with Color Jam on Sept. 18 from 4 to 8 p.m. at Alethia Tanner Park, 227 Harry Thomas Way NE. Admission is free. The celebration features a curated artisan market with more than 20 local makers, food trucks, live entertainment, interactive art activities and a pop-up beer garden hosted by Lost Generation Brewing Co., a NoMa-area brewery at 327 S St. NE.

The public can watch muralists paint throughout the week along the trail before the closing party.

NoMa BID President and CEO Maura Brophy said in an Aug. 7 press release that the murals "create landmarks, spark conversations, support artists and make our neighborhood more welcoming."

The 2026 lineup was selected from more than 150 applicants and includes Astro the Artist, Tim Cunningham, Real Dee, Rosy Sunshine, Donavon Brutus, Tia Wilson, Gray, Patrick Owens, Heather Jones and Jaswant Pakki (a collaborative pair), Davide Prete with University of the District of Columbia graduate students, HKS181, Jahru, Jessica Elder, Maspaz, Julienne Kaleta and Brocha. Muralist coordination is led by Corey Bernat and Marc Pekala, both alumni of previous festivals.

The NoMa corridor holds 437,000 square feet of occupied retail space and roughly 6,400 apartments, giving the festival a sizable built-in audience of residents and workers. The BID says its annual events collectively draw more than 50,000 people to the neighborhood each year, though that figure covers all BID programming, not NoMa in Color alone.

The festival is supported by a partnership with the WMATA Art in Transit Program and sponsorship from Events DC and Lime. Schedule updates are available at nomabid.org/nomaincolor.