Craven County North Carolina NC Plein Air Art Festival
For one week each May, the streets and waterfronts of historic New Bern turn into an open-air studio. Painters set up easels on sidewalks, along the riverfront and in front of old brick storefronts, and anyone walking past can stop, watch a blank canvas become a finished landscape, and ask the artist what happens next. That is the heart of the North Carolina Plein Air Art Festival: a juried outdoor-painting competition, based in New Bern, in which nationally and globally acclaimed painters work in public all week and sell the fresh paintings they make at the festival headquarters. It is an art festival, not a county fair.
About the Festival
The North Carolina Plein Air Art Festival in New Bern is a week-long competition in which invited painters paint outdoors, on location, across three counties, and the resulting work goes on sale daily at the festival headquarters. The festival is owned and operated by Plein Air New Bern, a nonprofit organisation, and its organiser in every published layer is Kippy Hammond. The headquarters, including the gallery, demonstrations, workshops and sales, sits at the New Bern Farmers Market on South Front Street in historic downtown New Bern, less than two blocks from Tryon Palace. New Bern is the county seat of Craven County, and it hosts the festival headquarters.
What makes the event unusual is that the painting itself is the show. There is no single festival ground beyond headquarters. The painters spread out across historic New Bern and travel to Beaufort, home of the North Carolina Maritime Museum, and Oriental, the sailing capital of North Carolina in the festival’s own words, with additional sites of their own choosing across Craven, Carteret and Pamlico Counties. Visitors find the painters through the festival’s artist-locator app. The finished work flows back to headquarters each day as wet canvas and goes straight onto the gallery walls for sale.
Quick Facts
| Item | Detail |
| Festival | North Carolina Plein Air Art Festival in New Bern |
| Headquarters | New Bern Farmers Market, 421 South Front Street, New Bern |
| Host town | New Bern, the Craven County seat |
| 2026 edition | 6th Annual, May 11–17, 2026 |
| Organiser | Plein Air New Bern, a nonprofit organisation; Kippy Hammond, festival organiser |
| Admission | All free except workshops, the 2026 awards celebration, and a modest Quick Paint fee for artists |
| Painting towns | New Bern, Beaufort and Oriental, with further sites across Craven, Carteret and Pamlico Counties |
| Artists | Year-fenced counts, never settled: 35 in 2023 and 2024, 37 in 2025, three conflicting figures for 2026 |
| Paintings | Approximately 400 fresh paintings across the week, the organiser’s own estimate |
| Top award | Best of Show Koffenberger Award, four thousand dollars |
A Competition with a Short, Bright History
The organisation behind the festival states its own inception as 2018, describing itself as a self-sustaining fundraising organisation for the visual arts. That 2018 date is the organisation’s stated inception. It is not stated anywhere in the festival’s own material as the festival’s first edition, and no founding year for the festival itself can be computed from the record.
The edition billings run in a clean, consistent sequence in the festival’s own press releases and site: 3rd Annual in 2023, 4th Annual in 2024, 5th Annual in 2025 and 6th Annual in 2026. No first-edition year may be back-calculated from the 6th Annual billing, and no uninterrupted-run claim may be built on the sequence. The name history resists a tidy story too: the organisation’s About page, in a layer written for 2024, says the event would rebrand to North Carolina Plein Air Art Festival for 2024, yet its own 2023 press release already headlines that name, and a 2022 magazine account still called it Plein Air New Bern — so this article asserts no clean rename date.
For a useful comparison, see the Columbus County North Carolina NC Pecan Harvest Festival for another county festival.
The documented editions are the 3rd Annual, May 14–21, 2023, with 35 artists; the 4th Annual, May 12–19, 2024, again with 35 artists; and the 5th Annual, May 11–18, 2025, with 37 artists, its prospectus preserving the week’s skeleton of Sunday orientation, daily gallery hours, a Saturday awards reception and a final-Sunday Quick Paint.
What to Expect
Watching the Painters at Work
The standing shape of the festival, from its own sources, is a juried plein air painting competition. Featured artists paint outdoors on location all week within the open boundaries of Craven, Pamlico and Carteret Counties. They report their positions through the artist-locator app, so visitors can track painters down and watch them work. Artists turn in two fresh pieces by Wednesday and at least three works by Saturday afternoon, for the Collector’s Preview Party and judging. The festival’s own estimate puts the week’s output at approximately 400 paintings.
The Gallery and the Daily Rhythm
Fresh paintings delivered to headquarters go on sale daily in the exhibition and sales gallery at the farmers market. In the fenced 2025 layer the gallery opened daily from nine until seven. Daily artist demonstrations and daily gallery talks run through the week. The week builds toward Saturday’s Collector’s Preview, judging and awards celebration. The top award is the Best of Show Koffenberger Award, four thousand dollars in the 2025 prospectus. Award totals are fenced by year: twelve thousand dollars in the 2024 listing layer, sixteen thousand dollars in the 2026 layers; no single total is the standing prize fund.
Learning: Demonstrations, Talks and Workshops
Workshop and juror names change every year, so they stay in their years. In 2024 the workshops were led by Shanna Kunz and James Richards. In 2025 they were led by Shanna Kunz and Phil Starke, that year’s jurors — Starke for selection, Kunz for awards. In the 2026 press layer the workshops are led by Russell Jewell and John T. Eiseman, with Aimee Erickson as selection juror and Jewell as awards juror in the magazine listing layer — Jewell in both roles, recorded unmerged.
The Quick Paint Finale
The closing Quick Paint is the festival’s most democratic hour. Youth and adult amateur artists paint alongside the professionals, in public, for ribbons and cash awards. Artists pay a modest, unpublished fee to enter; spectators watch free. In the fenced 2025 prospectus the Quick Paint fell on the final Sunday.
Planning Your Visit
Getting There and Getting Around
Headquarters is the New Bern Farmers Market at 421 South Front Street, where the gallery, demonstrations, talks, workshops and sales all happen. New Bern holds the headquarters and much of the painting; Beaufort and Oriental hold satellite painting days. One documented satellite venue, fenced to its layer, is the Beaufort Historic Site at 130 Turner Street in Beaufort, the site of a two-day Beaufort venue within the 2026 week, with a reception to meet the Beaufort painters.
Three addresses must never be mistaken for the festival: the Bank of the Arts at 317 Middle Street, the Craven Arts Council’s gallery, which appears as a map pin in an aggregator listing but is placed there by no festival-side source; a post office box in New Bern, the festival’s mailing address, never a venue; and Tryon Palace, a nearby landmark and painting subject, never the host venue. Parking, shuttle and street-closure detail is not published in the festival-side layers fetched.
What It Costs
The festival’s own governing statement, in its 2026 homepage layer, is that all activities are free except the workshops, Saturday’s awards celebration, and a modest fee for artists to enter the Quick Paint competition, with no charge for spectators. The list varies by layer: the 2025 press release lists only the workshops and the Quick Paint fee, with no awards-celebration exception — so the awards celebration is ticketed only in 2026-layer terms. No amount is published for any paid element.
Money that is not admission must not be mistaken for it. Paintings in the gallery are sold, at prices set per work — art prices, never an entry cost. Artists commit a portion of all art sales to the nonprofit’s mission, a term of participation, never a visitor price. The documented lodging fact is the opposite of a camping offer: featured artists are housed by local hosts. That private hospitality is never visitor camping or public lodging, and no camping offer appears for this festival anywhere in the record.
The 2026 Dates and the Conflicts Inside Them
The 2026 edition is billed as the 6th Annual and published as running May 11–17, 2026. Article copy may state only the published span: May 11–17, 2026. The festival’s own 2026 layers disagree among themselves, and the disagreements must stand in the open. The homepage says it begins Sunday, May 11, 2026 and calls it an eight-day festival — but May 11, 2026 is a Monday, and May 11–17 is seven days; the Sunday and eight-day wording is 2025 text carried over. No weekday for the 2026 start and no eight-day run for 2026 may ever be printed.
The artist count for 2026 is a three-way conflict in the festival’s own layers, and no figure may be printed as settled: 35 on the festival homepage, 37 in the 2026 press document — twenty newly juried painters joining seventeen award winners and top performers from 2025 — and 38 in the magazine listings. Earlier years are fenced too: 35 artists in 2023 and 2024, 37 in 2025. Even the 2024 split conflicts, with the festival’s own documents swapping the newly-juried and returning figures. The festival fields roughly three dozen acclaimed painters, the exact count varying by layer and year.
A Sample Day in the Festival Week
A visitor arriving midweek might start at headquarters, where fresh paintings from the previous day are already on the walls. By late morning the artist-locator app points to a painter on a New Bern street corner. On the Saturday, the judged works go up for the Collector’s Preview, the awards celebration follows in the evening, and the Quick Paint closes the festival.
How It Compares
Unlike the county fairs in most of this series, which measure themselves in gates, rides and livestock, this festival measures itself in canvases, and its only admission is the absence of one for nearly everything on offer. Compared with other plein air festivals elsewhere in the country, its distinction is structural: a single nonprofit owner-operator, a headquarters in a downtown farmers market, a three-county painting territory, and a host-housing system in which local residents take the visiting artists into their homes. Its own billing calls New Bern the first capital of North Carolina and Oriental the sailing capital of North Carolina.
Checklist for Your Visit
- Start at the Farmers Market headquarters, 421 South Front Street, for the gallery, talks and demonstrations
- Use the artist-locator app to find painters working outdoors in New Bern, Beaufort and Oriental
- Check the current year’s dates before travelling; the 2026 layers carry stale weekday wording
- Expect nearly everything to be free: only workshops, the 2026 awards celebration, and the artists’ Quick Paint fee are paid
- Budget separately for art: gallery paintings are sold per work
- Do not expect camping, a midway, rides or livestock
- Do not mistake the Bank of the Arts or Tryon Palace for festival venues
- Watch for the Saturday Collector’s Preview, the awards celebration, and the closing Quick Paint
- Remember the painters are guests in local homes
- Leave time for Beaufort and Oriental as well as downtown New Bern
Beyond the Festival Grounds
There is no festival ground to step beyond, only three towns and three counties of painting territory. New Bern itself rewards the extra day: a historic downtown built on two rivers, with Tryon Palace as its great landmark and subject. Beaufort brings the maritime subjects; Oriental brings the sailing world the festival’s own copy celebrates. None of these towns is a separate festival base, and none of their independent events belongs in this festival’s story.
Why It Matters
The festival matters because it makes the creative process public. Most art reaches the public finished and framed; here the public watches the middle of the act, with the painting still wet when it reaches the wall. That openness is also the nonprofit’s fundraising model: artists give a portion of every sale back to the mission. The host system deepens it further — visiting painters sleep in local homes and spend a week inside the community they are painting.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is attending the festival free?
Nearly everything is free. The festival’s own governing statement, in its 2026 layer, is that all activities are free except the workshops, Saturday’s awards celebration, and a modest fee for artists to enter the Quick Paint competition, with no charge for spectators. In the 2025 layer the exceptions were only the workshops and the Quick Paint fee, so the awards celebration is ticketed only in 2026-layer terms.
Where is the festival based, and where does the painting happen?
The headquarters is the New Bern Farmers Market at 421 South Front Street in historic downtown New Bern, and that is where the gallery, demonstrations, talks, workshops and sales happen. The painting spreads across New Bern, Beaufort and Oriental, with further sites across three counties. Beaufort’s Historic Site is a satellite venue in the 2026 week, never the headquarters, and the Bank of the Arts and Tryon Palace are not festival venues.
How many painters take part each year?
The record does not settle on one number. The festival fielded 35 artists in 2023 and 2024 and 37 in 2025. For 2026 its own layers give three different figures — 35 on the homepage, 37 in the press document and 38 in the magazine listings — and none may be printed as settled. Expect roughly three dozen acclaimed painters.
Can I buy a painting, and can I paint too?
Yes to both, in different ways. Fresh paintings go on sale daily in the headquarters gallery, priced per work. Amateurs, including young artists, can enter the closing Quick Paint and paint alongside the professionals for ribbons and cash awards; artists pay a modest entry fee, the amount unpublished, and spectators watch free.
What to Expect From the Next Craven County North Carolina NC Plein Air Art Festival
How often is the Craven County North Carolina NC Plein Air Art Festival held?
The festival is an annual May event; the 6th Annual ran May 11–17, 2026.
When is the next Craven County North Carolina NC Plein Air Art Festival?
No dates for a next edition are published in the layers fetched, and none are asserted here. Visitors should look for the festival’s own announcement rather than assuming the previous year’s span.
Will the dates change?
The dates have moved within May from year to year — May 14–21 in 2023, May 12–19 in 2024, May 11–18 in 2025 and May 11–17 in 2026 — so the span should always be checked against the current year’s announcement. The season, May, has held steady across every documented edition, while the exact days have not.
The North Carolina Plein Air Art Festival rewards the visitor who treats it as a working studio rather than a show. Arrive at headquarters, find a painter through the locator app, and walk back to the gallery to see the painting, still wet, on the wall.
