Seattle Cherry Blossom & Japanese Cultural Festival
The Seattle Cherry Blossom & Japanese Cultural Festival celebrates Japanese culture and America’s relationship with Japan. The three-day event includes arts and crafts booths, traditional cuisine, exhibits and special performances that fill Seattle Center with festive fun. Enjoy the boom of taiko drums, discover ikebana flowers, taste delicious Japanese food, experience tea ceremony demonstrations. The event commemorates Japan’s gift of 1,000 blossoming cherry trees to Seattle in 1976. The trees were planted along Lake Washington Boulevard, in Seward Park and other places around the city.
Northwest Folklife Festival
This festival is produced by Northwest Folklife and Seattle Center and hosts more than 7,000 participants, 27 stages and venues, roughly 1000 performances, and an audience of approximately 250,000. Immerse yourself in four days of music and dance performances, visual arts and folklore exhibits, workshops, craft and cooking demonstrations and films. There’s a bit of everything here so it’s literally perfect for all ages, all interests, and it’s a lot of fun.
Seattle International Film Festival
The Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) is the largest film festival in the U.S. and is considered one of the most influential film festivals in the world. Attendance in the past has topped 160,000. Since the 1970s it has played 25 days straight screening over 400 feature and short films from over 60 different countries. Each year SIFF attracts directors, actors, and critics from around the globe, who participate in special events, post-film Q&A sessions, and provocative forums.
Fremont Solstice Fair
Fremont’s June fair, designed to coincide with the summer solstice, manages to be flamboyant, controversial and wacky. Stages are set up to host live music, stalls ply food and crafts, but the highlight is the famous Solstice Parade, notable for its nude cyclists who arrive en masse covered in imaginative body art. Thousands line the streets.
Bumbershoot
A fair few people – Seattleites or otherwise – would say that this is Seattle’s finest festival, with major arts and cultural events at the Seattle Center on the Labor Day weekend in September. Bank on live music, comedy, theater, visual arts and dance, but also bank on crowds and hotels stuffed to capacity.
Seattle Pride
Seattle’s pioneering lesbian- and gay-pride event (held every year since 1974) usually falls on the last Sunday in June and includes a huge downtown parade followed by PrideFest, during which numerous vendors and entertainers set up in the Seattle Center.
Seafair
Huge crowds attend this festival, held on the water from mid-June to mid-August, with a pirate’s landing, a torchlight parade, an air show, a music marathon and even a Milk Carton Derby.
Moisture Festival
This increasingly prominent comedy/varietè festival takes place over four weeks from mid-March to mid-April. The quirkfest is spread around four venues including Teatro Zinzanni, Nordo’s Culinarium and its HQ, the Hale’s Palladium at Hale’s Ales Brewery in Fremont.
Hempfest
Seattle’s Hempfest is a large annual festival that began as a kind of stoner’s convention in 1991, but has since morphed into a full-on celebration of marijuana culture attended by over 100,000 people. It’s held in Myrtle Edwards Park on the Seattle waterfront on the third weekend in August.
TWIST: Seattle Queer Film Festival
This popular festival in October shows new gay-themed films from directors worldwide. It’s curated by the Three Dollar Bill Cinema.
Viking Days
A celebratory combination of aquavit, music and warriors in horned helmets that takes place in Ballard in August. Based at the Nordic Heritage Museum.
