Get a sneak peek of Pennsylvania’s best spring & summer festivals
Plan to fill your spring and summer weekends with these festivals in Pennsylvania.
Winter won’t last forever! And when the weather finally warms up, festival season begins. From celebrations of art to a festival devoted to the humble pickle, Pennsylvania’s spring and summer weekends are packed with events offering everything from food and shopping to live music and a chance to connect with local communities.
Read on to learn about the festivals in Pennsylvania that you won’t want to miss in 2026—and then mark your calendars.
Festivals in central Pennsylvania
Lewisburg Arts Festival – Lewisburg
Date: Saturday, April 25, 2026
Each spring, thousands of people descend on Market Street in Union County’s Lewisburg to visit the Lewisburg Arts Festival, a free festival that welcomes more than 100 artists from Central Pennsylvania and the surrounding region. Vendors are chosen by a jury of artists and offer a variety of art forms, including fine art and folk art. Plus, the festival features food and drinks, kids’ activities, and live entertainment. Take the festival shuttle to visit all five downtown stops—and there’s even a free shuttle that will conveniently take you to offsite parking.
Artsfest – Harrisburg
Dates: Saturday, May 23 to Monday, May 25, 2026
Harrisburg’s annual Artsfest will feature more than 170 artists and artisans from across the country in the capital city’s Riverfront Park, on the banks of the Susquehanna River. Hand-crafted works will be available for sale across more than a dozen different forms, from ceramics and fiber arts to woodcarvings and metalworks. The region’s biggest juried arts festival is also an opportunity to bring in other fun, like kids’ activities, live music, a Jazzfest, a local artist showcase, and even a special art project constructed by the community.
Jubilee Day – Mechanicsburg
Date: Thursday, June 18, 2026
The largest one-day street fair on the entire East Coast takes place in Mechanicsburg in June, when carnival rides, live entertainment, and hundreds of arts and crafts vendors and food stalls take over the town’s Main and Market Streets for Jubilee Day, a free Mechanicsburg tradition that has persisted for more than a century. Though Mechanicsburg may be small with a population of just over 9,000, as many as 70,000 people will welcome summer during this year’s community celebration.
Endless Mountain Music Festival – Wellsboro
Dates: Friday, July 17 to Sunday, Aug. 2, 2026
Each summer, the Endless Mountain Music Festival brings celebrated classical musicians to the rural mountains of Central Pennsylvania, hosting 17 shows over 17 days. The performances run from orchestral music to percussion, big band, and string quartets and are hosted alongside the beauty of the region in Wellsboro, Knoxville, Mansfield, and Coudersport, as well as in parts of nearby southern New York. When tickets go on sale, you can purchase admission to individual shows or get a discount by planning to attend multiple—even all 17.
Festivals in western Pennsylvania
Art All Night – Pittsburgh
Dates: TBA, likely Saturday, April 25, and Sunday, April 26, 2026
A free Pittsburgh festival lasting 22 hours, Art All Night invites artists of all kinds—musicians, videographers, painters, actors, and more—to bring their work to the community. There is no jury or fee to participate; rather, artists sign up for performance slots (including live painting) that run between 4 p.m. on Saturday and 2 p.m. on Sunday. That’s right, you might see a local band perform at 3 a.m.
At noon on Sunday, the artworks created at Art All Night are auctioned off to community members.
Pennsylvania Firefly Festival – Tionesta
Dates: Friday, June 26 and Saturday, June 27, 2026
Celebrate the Pennsylvania state insect, the firefly, at the Pennsylvania Firefly Festival in Forest County’s Tionesta. Everyone is invited to charming Tionesta Market Village on Saturday, June 27, for a community festival day featuring live music, unique Market Village vendors, and educational exhibits on fireflies and the surrounding environment.
The festival also hosts programming and guided tours to see fireflies—including synchronous firefly displays—at Tionesta Lake Information Center for a lucky 75 guests each night. Because of overwhelming demand, a lottery system determines who can purchase tickets to the programs featuring the celebrity insects. Sign up before the end of March to enter the lottery.
Picklesburgh – Pittsburgh
Dates: TBA, likely Friday, July 17 to Sunday, July 19, 2026
Picklesburgh burst onto the Pittsburgh festival scene in 2015 and quickly became known to pickle fans nationwide, with the downtown Pittsburgh festival attracting as many as 250,000 visitors in 2024. Picklesburgh organizers have been hard at work to make the event—with its pickle juice drinking contests, pickle-flavored beer and pierogies, and live entertainment—a can’t-miss festival even as accolades like the best specialty food festival in the U.S. encourage shoulder-to-shoulder crowds. Last year, the festival expanded its footprint, operating on the Roberto Clemente Bridge, on the Andy Warhol Bridge, and throughout several other downtown locations.
CelebrateErie – Erie
Dates: Friday, Aug. 14 to Sunday, Aug. 16, 2026
CelebrateErie is the Erie region’s largest festival, a three-day event celebrating—what else?—the culture, food, and community of the city of Erie. The festival brings dozens of live performances, food vendors, and activities to downtown Erie, with easy access to festival events at the Erie Art Museum, expERIEnce Children’s Museum, and a number of downtown businesses.
Festivals in eastern Pennsylvania
Subaru Cherry Blossom Festival – Philadelphia
Dates: Saturday, March 28 and Sunday, March 29, 2026 (Sakura Weekend); additional events in the surrounding weeks
Welcome the spring season to Philly at the Subaru Cherry Blossom Festival of Greater Philadelphia, an annual festival in West Fairmount Park celebrating Japanese arts and culture as well as the blooming of the city’s cherry blossom trees. This year, 2026, marks 100 years since Japan first gifted Philadelphia with the flowering trees.
Peak bloom, which is typically between late March and early April, coincides with the festival’s main event—“Sakura Weekend.” Besides hanami—enjoying the flowering cherry blossoms—the ticketed Sakura Weekend will feature an artist market, food vendors, live performances, and kids’ activities. Additional cherry blossom festival events and programs will also take place throughout March and April.
Musikfest – Bethlehem
Dates: Friday, July 31 to Sunday, Aug. 9, 2026
The country’s largest free music festival, Musikfest, takes place in Pennsylvania’s own Bethlehem over 10 days in the summer. More than one million people will journey to Bethlehem to see performances from a schedule filled with over 400 musicians and performing artists. The 2026 headliners of the festival’s main stage (the only stage to charge admission) include Yellowcard, Taking Back Sunday, Weird Al, AJR, Train, John Mulaney, and more to be announced. In addition to the main stage, 15 other stages will feature (free!) live music and performances.
Musikfest takes place at two locations—SteelStacks on Bethlehem’s south side and the Colonial Industrial Quarter on the northern side of the Lehigh River.
Goschenhoppen Folk Festival – Perkiomenville (Montgomery County)
Dates: Friday, Aug. 7 and Saturday, Aug. 8, 2026
Enjoy traditional food, handmade crafts, and folk music at the Goschenhoppen Folk Festival in Montgomery County, where more than 500 volunteers in period clothing will demonstrate what Pennsylvania German life was like in the 1700s and 1800s. Taking place at the Henry Antes Plantation in Perkiomenville, the 2026 event will be the folk festival’s 58th year. Tickets include access to living history programs, dozens of demonstrations, delicious Pennsylvania Dutch eats, and live performances.
La Festa Italiana – Scranton
Dates: Friday, Sept. 4 to Monday, Sept. 7, 2026
Scranton’s La Festa Italiana attracts more than 100,000 people each year to celebrate Italian culture through food, music, entertainment, and community connections. The four-day festival is centered within downtown Scranton’s Courthouse Square, meant to evoke a piazza, the open town square in Italian communities. Italian vocalists, heritage dance troupes, and local bands perform for the crowd while vendors hawk traditional Italian cuisine, including coffee drinks at the festival’s cappuccino tent. And on Sunday morning, the festival hosts a Catholic Mass in Italian.
The 2026 Labor Day weekend festival will be La Festa’s 50th incarnation.
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