AUGUST
Maryland Renaissance Festival
Don your best 16th-century attire and stroll Revel Grove’s 27-acre village at the Maryland Renaissance Festival. Lords, ladies, knights, and jesters are welcome to shop the goods from more than 140 artisans. (For those without any 16th-century gear, the fair’s Brass Dragon shop will custom-shape a circlet headpiece.) Visitors can watch demonstrations of jousting and archery, see performances across ten stages, and feast at English-style taverns. Don’t miss the glassblowing show.
Admission: $23 and up for adults, $13 and up for kids.
Pro tips: Bring cash (many places don’t accept credit cards), wear closed-toe shoes (it can get dusty), and buy passes way ahead of time (it sells out every year).
*Weekends and Holidays Only
National Book Festival
Attention, bookworms: The National Book Festival returns to the Washington Convention Center this month. The schedule is full of appearances by bestselling authors—this year’s lineup includes James Patterson, James McBride, and Sandra Cisneros—and in the past has also included zine making, Braille-based activities, storytelling, and more reading fun.
Admission: Free.
Corn Maze & Apple Harvest
Back-to-school season ushers in apple picking and pig races at Great Country Farms. Don’t miss the freshly pressed cider and apple-cider doughnuts. Kids can venture through a 12-acre play area, ride a cow-themed train, and roast marshmallows.
Admission: $16 and up for adults, $14 and up for kids.
Pro tip: You can buy feed at the market to feed the cute goats as you walk around.
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SEPTEMBER
Festival Boliviano
The area’s first Bolivian festival was held in 1989. Since then, the local nonprofit Pro-Bolivia Committee has organized this event, bringing together traditional food, music, dance, and crafts. A parade of performers is pure chaotic fun, with colorful costumes and a cheering crowd. The festival, which was held at EagleBank Arena for the past few years, returns this fall to an outdoor venue at Prince William Fairgrounds.
Admission: $25.
Pro tip: If you want to watch the parade—which goes in a circle around the food and craft vendors—arrive early to set up a folding chair.
Adams Morgan Day
For more than 45 years, this community gathering has filled the DC neighborhood—on and around 18th Street and Columbia Road—with live music, family entertainment, and art. Local eateries and bars will be serving discounted fare and refreshments, while the main performances take place at Kalorama Park and the Marie Reed Center.
Admission: Free.
Ukrainian Festival
Thousands of people flocked to this cultural celebration last year on the grounds of St. Andrew’s Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral. Among the draws: the colorful choreography of a Ukrainian dance troupe, traditional crafts, a beer garden, and—new this year—a concert featuring entertainers from Ukraine and Canada.
Admission: Free on Friday and for anyone under 20 every day; $15 or $20 on Sunday and Saturday, respectively.
Pro tip: Check out the vendors selling Ukrainian merch—a lot of the proceeds go to charity.
Falls Church Festival
This fall jamboree is a combination event. First, a festival brings together more than 90 crafters, businesses, and civic organizations for a day of family fun and entertainment, including pony and amusement rides for kids and a beer garden for adults. Simultaneously, Taste of Falls Church dishes up cuisine from area restaurants.
Admission: Free.
Cox Farms Fall Festival
A hayride in an antique tractor—which winds through different themed areas featuring actors and surprises—is a highlight of this annual celebration. There’s even more for kiddos, including rope swings, farm animals, a tractor museum, and an enormous slide. Add in nature walks, apple and cider tastings, a pumpkin smash, and a corn maze (which turns into spooky Fields of Fear in the evenings as Halloween approaches) and it’s quintessential fall. Admission: $10 and up.
Pro tip: Don’t leave without a box of cider doughnuts. Also, if you’re doing the hayride, you may want to wear long pants.
Lovettsville Oktoberfest
This Loudoun County town celebrates its German heritage every October. Come dressed in your best dirndl or lederhosen to partake in traditional food and games. There’s also a wiener-dog race, a stein-hoisting competition, and music on the main stage.
Admission: Free.
H Street Festival
This neighborhood-wide festival—spanning 11 blocks—fills the street with food from area eateries; showcases local vendors and fashions; and offers kids’ activities, contests, line dancing, and multiple stages for music and other programming.
Admission: Free.
Fiesta DC
Fiesta DC launched in the ’70s in Mount Pleasant to express the richness of Latino culture. Now the deep-rooted tradition fills the streets of downtown every year with ancestral fashions, Latin music, folk dance, and a lively parade on Constitution Avenue.
Admission: Free.
Mosaic Fall Festival
Festival-goers can buy autumn produce and snacks from Fresh-Farm Market vendors, check out handmade items and vintage products from URBNmarket, paint pumpkins, play in the games corner, and move their feet to the beats of local artists performing center stage.
Admission: Free.
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OCTOBER
Farm Day
Cherry Hill Park transforms into a children’s wonderland, with a petting farm, pumpkin and birdhouse painting, scarecrow crafts, beekeeping and blacksmith demos, and pony rides. Also on tap: tours of the historic Cherry Hill Farmhouse museum.
Admission: Free.
Fall Festival
Browse hundreds of arts-and-crafts booths—featuring wood, jewelry, glass, pottery, digital art, and more—in historic Old Town Fairfax. There will be lots of food vendors, too, along with rides and other activities for youngsters, plus three stages of music ranging from rock to country to Irish-Latin. For more fun, check out Sudden M Pact band at the After Fest concert in Old Town Square.
Admission: Free.
Fall Harvest Festival
This event on the grounds of George Washington’s Mount Vernon shows what life was like during the 18th century in America, with demonstrations of laundry techniques, horseshoeing, candle making, spinning, traditional farming, and even wheat treading, in which horses walk on wheat in a specially designed 16-sided barn to separate the seeds from the chaff.
Admission: $26.
Back to Top
NOVEMBER
Alexandria Fall Fest
River Farm is once again the host site for this affair, which will feature food trucks, magic shows, a bounce house, and farm animals, all set against terrific Potomac River views.
Admission: $15 and up.
Festival Fails
We’re quick to label any big event gone wrong the latest Fyre Festival. But these local gatherings didn’t need rich millennials stranded on an island to be declared a flop.
NOVA Mac & Cheese Meltdown Festival
Organizers probably didn’t predict how apt the term “meltdown” would be for this April 2019 festival. The event was doomed before it started, when planners canceled the morning of, blaming the Loudoun County Health Department. Initially, instead of reimbursing ticket holders, they offered cheeseheads the chance to attend the festival months later in Maryland or entry to a different festival celebrating a different food on a different date.
Something in the Water
When Pharrell brought his music festival to DC in June 2022, tickets for the three-day event on Independence Avenue started at $350. However, many would-be attendees learned that the price didn’t ensure admission: On the second night, the DC Fire Marshal closed the gates, barring hundreds of people. It was also a personal disaster for one Justin Timberlake, whose bad dancing elicited such a dramatic reaction that he later issued an apology. The festival was subsequently moved back to Virginia Beach.
Asia Collective Night Market
An event permit noted that 25,000 people were expected at this festival in August 2022 at the Howard County Fairgrounds. But according to the Howard County Police Department, attendance far surpassed that number, with non-ticketed people also being allowed entry. Traffic was so brutal that one of the performers had to get out of their car and run across the highway to make it onstage. The debacle even inspired a Facebook group— “Asia Collective Night Market Disaster”—to hold organizers accountable.
AUGUST
Maryland Renaissance Festival
Don your best 16th-century attire and stroll Revel Grove’s 27-acre village at the Maryland Renaissance Festival. Lords, ladies, knights, and jesters are welcome to shop the goods from more than 140 artisans. (For those without any 16th-century gear, the fair’s Brass Dragon shop will custom-shape a circlet headpiece.) Visitors can watch demonstrations of jousting and archery, see performances across ten stages, and feast at English-style taverns. Don’t miss the glassblowing show.
Admission: $23 and up for adults, $13 and up for kids.
Pro tips: Bring cash (many places don’t accept credit cards), wear closed-toe shoes (it can get dusty), and buy passes way ahead of time (it sells out every year).
*Weekends and Holidays Only
National Book Festival
Attention, bookworms: The National Book Festival returns to the Washington Convention Center this month. The schedule is full of appearances by bestselling authors—this year’s lineup includes James Patterson, James McBride, and Sandra Cisneros—and in the past has also included zine making, Braille-based activities, storytelling, and more reading fun.
Admission: Free.
Corn Maze & Apple Harvest
Back-to-school season ushers in apple picking and pig races at Great Country Farms. Don’t miss the freshly pressed cider and apple-cider doughnuts. Kids can venture through a 12-acre play area, ride a cow-themed train, and roast marshmallows.
Admission: $16 and up for adults, $14 and up for kids.
Pro tip: You can buy feed at the market to feed the cute goats as you walk around.
Back to Top
SEPTEMBER
Festival Boliviano
The area’s first Bolivian festival was held in 1989. Since then, the local nonprofit Pro-Bolivia Committee has organized this event, bringing together traditional food, music, dance, and crafts. A parade of performers is pure chaotic fun, with colorful costumes and a cheering crowd. The festival, which was held at EagleBank Arena for the past few years, returns this fall to an outdoor venue at Prince William Fairgrounds.
Admission: $25.
Pro tip: If you want to watch the parade—which goes in a circle around the food and craft vendors—arrive early to set up a folding chair.
Adams Morgan Day
For more than 45 years, this community gathering has filled the DC neighborhood—on and around 18th Street and Columbia Road—with live music, family entertainment, and art. Local eateries and bars will be serving discounted fare and refreshments, while the main performances take place at Kalorama Park and the Marie Reed Center.
Admission: Free.
Ukrainian Festival
Thousands of people flocked to this cultural celebration last year on the grounds of St. Andrew’s Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral. Among the draws: the colorful choreography of a Ukrainian dance troupe, traditional crafts, a beer garden, and—new this year—a concert featuring entertainers from Ukraine and Canada.
Admission: Free on Friday and for anyone under 20 every day; $15 or $20 on Sunday and Saturday, respectively.
Pro tip: Check out the vendors selling Ukrainian merch—a lot of the proceeds go to charity.
Falls Church Festival
This fall jamboree is a combination event. First, a festival brings together more than 90 crafters, businesses, and civic organizations for a day of family fun and entertainment, including pony and amusement rides for kids and a beer garden for adults. Simultaneously, Taste of Falls Church dishes up cuisine from area restaurants.
Admission: Free.
Cox Farms Fall Festival
A hayride in an antique tractor—which winds through different themed areas featuring actors and surprises—is a highlight of this annual celebration. There’s even more for kiddos, including rope swings, farm animals, a tractor museum, and an enormous slide. Add in nature walks, apple and cider tastings, a pumpkin smash, and a corn maze (which turns into spooky Fields of Fear in the evenings as Halloween approaches) and it’s quintessential fall. Admission: $10 and up.
Pro tip: Don’t leave without a box of cider doughnuts. Also, if you’re doing the hayride, you may want to wear long pants.
Lovettsville Oktoberfest
This Loudoun County town celebrates its German heritage every October. Come dressed in your best dirndl or lederhosen to partake in traditional food and games. There’s also a wiener-dog race, a stein-hoisting competition, and music on the main stage.
Admission: Free.
H Street Festival
This neighborhood-wide festival—spanning 11 blocks—fills the street with food from area eateries; showcases local vendors and fashions; and offers kids’ activities, contests, line dancing, and multiple stages for music and other programming.
Admission: Free.
Fiesta DC
Fiesta DC launched in the ’70s in Mount Pleasant to express the richness of Latino culture. Now the deep-rooted tradition fills the streets of downtown every year with ancestral fashions, Latin music, folk dance, and a lively parade on Constitution Avenue.
Admission: Free.
Mosaic Fall Festival
Festival-goers can buy autumn produce and snacks from Fresh-Farm Market vendors, check out handmade items and vintage products from URBNmarket, paint pumpkins, play in the games corner, and move their feet to the beats of local artists performing center stage.
Admission: Free.
Back to Top
OCTOBER
Farm Day
Cherry Hill Park transforms into a children’s wonderland, with a petting farm, pumpkin and birdhouse painting, scarecrow crafts, beekeeping and blacksmith demos, and pony rides. Also on tap: tours of the historic Cherry Hill Farmhouse museum.
Admission: Free.
Fall Festival
Browse hundreds of arts-and-crafts booths—featuring wood, jewelry, glass, pottery, digital art, and more—in historic Old Town Fairfax. There will be lots of food vendors, too, along with rides and other activities for youngsters, plus three stages of music ranging from rock to country to Irish-Latin. For more fun, check out Sudden M Pact band at the After Fest concert in Old Town Square.
Admission: Free.
Fall Harvest Festival
This event on the grounds of George Washington’s Mount Vernon shows what life was like during the 18th century in America, with demonstrations of laundry techniques, horseshoeing, candle making, spinning, traditional farming, and even wheat treading, in which horses walk on wheat in a specially designed 16-sided barn to separate the seeds from the chaff.
Admission: $26.
Back to Top
NOVEMBER
Alexandria Fall Fest
River Farm is once again the host site for this affair, which will feature food trucks, magic shows, a bounce house, and farm animals, all set against terrific Potomac River views.
Admission: $15 and up.
Festival Fails
We’re quick to label any big event gone wrong the latest Fyre Festival. But these local gatherings didn’t need rich millennials stranded on an island to be declared a flop.
NOVA Mac & Cheese Meltdown Festival
Organizers probably didn’t predict how apt the term “meltdown” would be for this April 2019 festival. The event was doomed before it started, when planners canceled the morning of, blaming the Loudoun County Health Department. Initially, instead of reimbursing ticket holders, they offered cheeseheads the chance to attend the festival months later in Maryland or entry to a different festival celebrating a different food on a different date.
Something in the Water
When Pharrell brought his music festival to DC in June 2022, tickets for the three-day event on Independence Avenue started at $350. However, many would-be attendees learned that the price didn’t ensure admission: On the second night, the DC Fire Marshal closed the gates, barring hundreds of people. It was also a personal disaster for one Justin Timberlake, whose bad dancing elicited such a dramatic reaction that he later issued an apology. The festival was subsequently moved back to Virginia Beach.
Asia Collective Night Market
An event permit noted that 25,000 people were expected at this festival in August 2022 at the Howard County Fairgrounds. But according to the Howard County Police Department, attendance far surpassed that number, with non-ticketed people also being allowed entry. Traffic was so brutal that one of the performers had to get out of their car and run across the highway to make it onstage. The debacle even inspired a Facebook group— “Asia Collective Night Market Disaster”—to hold organizers accountable.
