Fall in the Florida Keys & Key West is an ideal time for outdoor activities and new endeavours. While Canadians start of fall with pumpkin-flavoured treats and jackets, the Keys islands, at the foot of Florida, remain infused with the subtropical flavours of Key lime, mango and coconut and are enveloped by warm, salt-sprayed breezes.
Here’s a rundown of what’s new and upcoming in the Florida Keys & Key West:
Airlift into Key West
At Key West International Airport (EYW), additional airport upgrades, slated for completion by spring 2026, include a modernized baggage claim with dual carousels, an expanded four-lane TSA checkpoint, a new pedestrian bridge and improved rental car counters. The airport’s concourse features a new 446-pannel electrochromic glass curtain wall and eight air-conditioned glass jet bridges for sheltered boarding and deplaning.
Spirit Airlines, beginning Nov. 6, is set to offer new nonstop service to Key West International Airport (EYW) from Hollywood-Fort Lauderdale International Airport (FLL), with service four times per week on Mondays, Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays. Starting Dec. 17, the service will be daily.
Accommodations
On Duck Key, the 60-acre Hawks Cay Resort, with 177 rooms and 197 villas, is fully renovating its marina, with 66 boat slips, and it’s set to be unveiled mid-December. Its ‘adults-only’ Pilar Bar, at the Oasis Cay pool with Ernest Hemingway-inspired cocktails, now features bar-top seating with light fare including salads, appetizers, tacos and handhelds. The resort also opened its new 75-seat Salt + Ash dining venue – the newest culinary concept by Florida native chef Jeremy Ford, a Michelin-recognized and Bravo reality series Top Chef winner. Located at 61 Hawks Cay Blvd., the resort has five swimming pools, a spa and saltwater lagoon.
In Marathon, Isla Bella Beach Resort, with 199 units, is offering two new all-inclusive dining packages, allowing guests to enjoy oceanfront dining for an upgraded luxury stay and a seamless checkout. Its All-inclusive Dining Package includes three daily meals, and unlimited snacks, soft drinks, coffee and non-alcoholic beverages. A separate package, Dining + Bar (21+), includes three daily meals; unlimited snacks, soft drinks, coffee and non-alcoholic beverages; and unlimited select beer, wine by the glass and mixed drinks from a curated spirits list. Pricing starts at $188 per guest, per day. Dining, with taxes and gratuity included, is at the resort’s three oceanfront venues: Mahina, The Beach Bar and Sushi Cabana.
The Doubletree by Hilton Grand Key Resort Key West, with 216 suites and rooms, is showcasing its full multi-million-dollar renovation that enhanced its accommodations, public areas, convention space and four meeting rooms, with 8,750 square feet for meetings and events: restaurant and lounge, outdoor verandah, waterside Tiki bar and deck surrounding its zero-entry pool. The renovation highlights textures, patterns and art that’s reflective of the Keys. Suites offer kitchenettes with microwave, refrigerator, sink and coffee station. The resort, located at 3990 S. Roosevelt Blvd., is five minutes from Key West International Airport via a complimentary hotel shuttle.
Historic Key West Vacation Rentals has launched its “The Quiet Season. The Real Key West” promotional campaign, encouraging travellers to trade short getaways for month-long stays in restored historic homes. The campaign spotlights fall as an ideal season to enjoy the authentic pace of the southernmost island city. Monthly rentals range from cigar-maker cottages to conch homes. Guests can work remotely with reliable Wi-Fi and experience a local’s life in historic Old Town without the need for a rental car. All properties are included in the fall promotion, which includes discounts with 50 rentals, and runs through Dec. 31.
Outdoors
In Key Largo, JD Outdoor Adventures has expanded with a new private bayside beach park at 10411 Overseas Highway bayside, for waterfront sunbathing, swimming with water toys, and picnic tables and shelters to rent for day usage. The fishing operator has also opened a family-friendly butterfly garden and nursery, JD Butterfly Garden & Nursery, located at 99150 Overseas Highway bayside, with butterfly-attracting plants. The garden features an array of caged birds including Monk parakeets, with green, yellow and gray coloring; Budgie parakeets, smaller than monks and known for their chatter; and Zebra finches, which are small social songbirds, native to Australia and Indonesia.
Events
Taste the Keys is a premier culinary event scheduled for the entire month of October in Key Largo. It features special prix-fixe menus for both lunch and dinner at participating Upper Keys restaurants. Taste the Keys will also feature Trolley Food Tours on Oct. 2 and 16, allowing ticketed participants a curated progressive dining experience with stops at five restaurants to sample small plates and paired beverages. Tickets are $125 p.p.
Visitors can unleash their inner dreamer, night creature or storybook star at Key West Fantasy Fest 2025 (banner photo). The internationally renowned costuming and masking festival, themed “Bedtime Stories and Magical Monsters” this year, is set for Friday, Oct. 17 through Sunday, Oct. 26. Fantasy Fest 2025 will feature masquerade parties, costume competitions, street fairs, performance art, glamorous galas, and an over-the-top grand parade.
Attractions
In Key Largo, MarineLab, a Florida Keys leader in marine science education, has been rebranded as MarineLab Undersea Park & Museum, with Jules’ Undersea Lodge – billed as the world’s only underwater hotel where a guest scuba dives to check into accommodations changing its name to Jules’ Undersea Lab. The transformation blends the Keys’ undersea habitat with experiential and new educational programs to make marine science and undersea living more tangible and available to the public. The park and museum are located at 51 Shoreland Dr. at mile marker 103 oceanside.
In Islamorada, Dolphin Life Hospital opened its doors on Sept. 1, 2025. Previously known as The Protect Center, the newly branded facility unveiled its above-ground 56,000-gallon saltwater intensive care unit pool, which is 6-feet-tall and spans 40 feet in diameter. The rehabilitation pool for small whales and dolphins offers remote viewing available for visitors. Dolphin Life Hospital offers short and long-term rehabilitative care with an on-site veterinary laboratory for sick, injured and orphaned dolphins and small whales. The facility also features a 2,000-sq.-foot Exploratorium, an interactive space with aquariums, wildlife and rotating exhibits; an educational classroom-style space for meetings, small groups, events and seminars; and its Sustain gift shop. Open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily at 82748 Overseas Highway (bayside). Tours are $15 p.p. and include museum admission.
In Marathon, the acclaimed Turtle Hospital, dedicated to the rehabilitation of endangered sea turtles, is undergoing a campus expansion with recent purchases of a Middle Keys bank building and cycle shop. The re-imagined bank facility, located west of the existing hospital at 2396 Overseas Highway, is to be converted for state-of-the-art research and medical treatments of turtles. It’s to be unveiled by late 2026 or early 2027. The world-renowned, nonprofit Turtle Hospital has successfully returned more than 3,000 turtles into the wild.
Mote Marine Laboratory offers a SCUBAPRO+Mote Community Coral Reef Restoration Citizen Dive program, partnering with Southpoint Divers, for certified divers and focused on marine research, conservation and coral restoration. Activities include coral restoration, monitoring marine ecosystems, and marine biology and conservation techniques. Participants meet in Key West at Southpoint Divers, 606 Front St., and learn about coral reef science and research to create genetically identical duplicates that can grow 50 times faster than a natural coral. The experience, priced at $200 p.p., includes an educational workshop, a two-tank dive, and citizen science completion card. Additional free tours take place Mote’s land-based coral nurseries in Islamorada at Bud n’ Mary’s Marina on Tuesdays at 2 p.m.; and in Key Largo at Reefhouse Resort & Marina on Mondays at 3 p.m.; Wednesdays at 10 a.m.; and Fridays at 10 a.m. Reservations are required.
Key West’s Elizabeth Bishop House & Garden, where the celebrated poet lived and wrote during the 1930s and 1940s, is scheduled to open to the public Nov. 1. The Elizabeth Bishop Garden showcases more than 80 plant species including Key West heritage plants such as rock rose, sugar apple and night-blooming cereus cactus. Fifty species are native to the Keys; and at least a dozen are on Florida’s endangered species list, with some believed to be extinct in the wild.
Did you know that the Truman Little White House Botanical Gardens, with nearly an acre of tropical foliage and trees surrounded by the original 1890 wrought iron fence, are part of the Rosalynn Carter Butterfly Trail, one of just 12 such trails in Florida? Named in honour of former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, the garden is a stop on the trail, founded in 2013 to increase the habitat for monarch butterflies across the nation and inspired by Carter’s own butterfly garden in Plains, Georgia. Botanical tours of the gardens are self-guided and free.
For more Florida Keys visitor information, go to visitfloridakeys.com or 1-800-FLA-KEYS