The city is running free chlorine through the water system this month

Florida's annual Back-to-School Sales Tax Holiday runs Monday, July 20 through Thursday, August 20, 2026 — a full month to stock up without paying sales tax. Clothing, footwear, wallets and qualifying bags priced $100 or less per item are tax-free, along with certain school supplies priced $50 or less per item and learning aids and jigsaw puzzles priced $30 or less. The biggest ticket: personal computers and certain computer accessories priced $1,500 or less qualify when purchased for noncommercial home or personal use. A few things to know before you shop: phones, video game consoles, rentals, and repairs are excluded, and purchases made at theme parks, public lodging establishments, or airports do not qualify.

The Motowners bring their Motown tribute show experience to Arts Garage on Friday, July 17. It is exactly the kind of booking Arts Garage has built its summer on: familiar catalog, live band, a room full of people who already know every word and are only pretending they might sit still. If your July has settled into a rhythm of errands, air conditioning, and waiting out the afternoon sky, a Friday night with the Temptations songbook secondhand is a reasonable way to break it.

The Delray Summer Greenmarket runs Saturday, July 18, starting at 9 a.m. at Old School Square, with local produce and goods on offer. It is the reliable spine of a Delray Saturday in the off-season — smaller than the winter crowds, which regulars will tell you is the whole appeal, and early enough that you can be done before the day turns into a wall of heat. Bring a bag, bring cash, and accept that you will leave with more herbs than any household can reasonably use before they wilt.

Art & Jazz on the Avenue is back Wednesday, July 22, at 6 p.m., bringing live music, live mural art, kids' activities, dancing, and dining in the street to Pineapple Grove. It's the closest thing this city has to a standing block party with a house band — artists working on walls in real time, tables pushed out past the curb, a crowd that skews all ages because the programming actually accounts for kids. If you have been meaning to show a visiting relative what people mean when they say downtown Delray works, this is the night to do it.

Old School Square hosts a free sunset concert on Friday, July 24 at 5 p.m., with tribute performances to Boston and Forever Foreigner. Free and outdoors is a combination that does a lot of work in the middle of a South Florida summer, and a 5 p.m. start means the music is well underway by the time the light goes gold over the lawn. Arena rock played at a volume the neighbors have to live with, on a Friday, at no cost. Bring a chair. The good patches of grass do not stay open long.

Delray Beach is moving to a new utility billing portal, and the changeover takes the old payment path offline. Online water bill payments are suspended from July 20 through July 28, 2026, while the transition happens. The city is waiving late fees through August 7 to cover the interruption, which is the sensible move — a billing system migration that pretends nothing is disrupted is a billing system migration that generates a month of angry phone calls. Two dates worth putting somewhere you'll see them: the 28th, when payments come back, and the 7th, when the waiver ends.