Pender County North Carolina NC Blueberry Festival
On the third weekend of June, downtown Burgaw turns blue. The North Carolina Blueberry Festival fills the historic courthouse square and nearby streets with a street fair, live music, a barbecue cook-off, a recipe contest, a morning run and bike ride, a car show, and farm tours. Burgaw is the county seat of Pender County, and Burgaw hosts this festival.
The weekend’s shape matters: it is not a two-full-day event, but a Friday kickoff plus one big Saturday. In 2026 it ran Friday, June 19 and Saturday, June 20. The next save-the-date runs June 18 to 19, 2027, while its text names June 19 as the main day.
About the Festival
The festival celebrates the crop that, in every layer’s shared summary, was first cultivated in Pender County in the 1930s. Southeastern North Carolina is, in the festival’s own words, one of the top blueberry-producing regions in the nation.
Organiser credits are kept in the sources’ own wordings, never merged into one. The North Carolina Blueberry Festival Association is the organiser form on the festival’s own sponsor page, described there as a recognized 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. A charity-listing layer carries a shorter registered form, North Carolina Blueberry Festival, as a 501(c)(3) name.
Historic committee forms belong to their own eras. A Blueberry Festival Committee speaks in a 2011 layer, with Martin Beech named there as its chair and as a former Burgaw town manager. A 2009 press layer spells the same man’s name Martin Beach and calls him Burgaw’s interim town manager and vice-chairman of the Association. People are fenced to their years: Dawn Best-Klingel is coordinator in 2011, Abby Homrighausen became executive director in December in a March 2024 layer, and Crystal Batts is festival director in 2026.
For a useful comparison, see the Pasquotank County North Carolina NC Potato Festival for another county festival.
The Town of Burgaw is the host municipality, not the organiser; its Board of Commissioners passed a resolution about the festival and its newsletter bills the festival, but those are civic layers. Pender County and Visit Pender tourism, North Carolina State University and NC Cooperative Extension, and Cape Fear Cyclists are partners and component leads, never the organiser.
Quick Facts
| Item | Detail |
| Event | North Carolina Blueberry Festival, also NC Blueberry Festival |
| Location | Historic downtown Burgaw, centred on the courthouse square |
| Host town | Burgaw, which is the county seat of Pender County |
| Timing | Annual festival on the third weekend of June |
| Most recent edition | Friday, June 19 and Saturday, June 20, 2026 |
| Admission | Free, with some activities and rides ticketed |
| Organiser form | North Carolina Blueberry Festival Association |
| Camping | None documented as a festival offer |
History
The festival’s founding is published in two forms that do not reconcile, and no settled founding year is printed here. The festival’s own sponsor page says it has grown since its founding in 2003. The Association’s own 2025 sponsorship packet says the very first festival was held in Burgaw in June of 2003, as a heritage celebration honouring blueberries grown in the southeastern region of the state.
Against that stands the Town of Burgaw’s own Resolution 2013-14, which recites that the first annual festival was held in Burgaw on June 26, 2004, and that the tenth annual festival was planned for June 15, 2013. A festival-sponsored magazine story likewise says the festival began in 2004, as a modest idea on the courthouse square that drew about five thousand visitors, a figure fenced to that sponsored story.
The edition billings run consistently with a 2004 first festival and not with 2003, and the conflict is recorded, never resolved. The festival was billed the Fourth Annual in 2007, the fifteenth annual in 2018, and the twenty-second annual in 2025, running straight from 2004 as first. No edition number is published for 2026 or 2027, and none is derived here.
The crop’s own history is older than the festival by some seventy years in every layer, and it must not be confused with the festival’s founding. One layer quotes Martin Beech in 2011 saying that in 1932 the first cultivated blueberries in North Carolina were grown in Pender County. Another layer, quoting the Pender County Extension director, says the first blueberry farm was established in 1936, when Harold Huntingdon from New Jersey bought thirteen hundred acres along the Black River. A history layer spells the farmer Harold Huntington, dates his arrival to in or about 1927, gives a sixteen hundred forty acre parcel near Beatty’s Bridge, and dates the first commercial crop to in or about 1934. The years, spellings, and acreage figures stand unreconciled; the shared summary is only that cultivated blueberries began in Pender County in the 1930s.
Burgaw was selected for the county seat in August 1877.
Attendance and economic impact are billed in conflict, never counted gates or audited totals: more than thirty thousand in a standing estimate, around twenty-five thousand every year in the 2011 layer, forty thousand in a 2024 business layer, around thirty-five thousand visitors each year in the 2026 director layer, with two million dollars to two million five hundred thousand dollars in 2025 benefits, up to fifty thousand each year in a sponsored story, and between one million six hundred thousand dollars and two million one hundred thousand dollars, net, in a 2010 survey layer.
What to Expect
The Friday Kickoff and the Main Saturday
The 2026 programme is fenced entire to 2026, from the festival’s own Events page. On Friday, June 19, the main stage carried Freddy Tripp from half past five to seven in the evening, followed by Landslide, a tribute to Fleetwood Mac, from half past seven to ten. On Saturday, June 20, the main stage carried Band of Brothers, The Pink Slips, Carl Newton’s Review, and The Embers featuring Craig Woolard.
Saturday’s grounds opened at nine in the morning in the tourism layer, with arts and crafts vendors from nine in the morning to six in the evening and food vendors available all day. The Beer and Wine Garden ran as part of the weekend, farm tours left from a shuttle pick-up on South Walker Street, and children’s activities filled Courthouse Avenue, with magic shows, a kids stage, a foam party, face painting, and meet-and-greets.
The Standing Spine and Earlier Years
Across the layers, the standing spine runs through a street fair of food and arts-and-crafts vendors with fresh local blueberries, live main-stage music and a beer and wine garden, a whole-hog barbecue cook-off, a blueberry recipe contest, a 5K and one-mile fun run and walk, the Tour de Blueberry bike ride, a car and truck show, farm tours, children’s activities, scholarship awards, and blueberry queens.
The 2025 programme is fenced entire to 2025 and may never be printed as 2026’s. In 2025 the Friday kickoff concert was The Tams, and Saturday opened at nine in the morning, with Band of Brothers, Mighty Saints of Soul, East Coast Party Band, and Chairman of the Board in that preview’s lineup, a pie-eating contest, a car and truck show, a beer and wine garden, farm tours, and ticketed rides. Older layers are fenced entire to their years: the 2018 layers carry a scholarship pageant, a model train show, and a BMX stunt show; the 2007 and 2011 layers carry a golf tournament and a farming exposition; a sponsored story names a new Blueberry Stomp.
Contests, Cook-offs, and the Recipe Trail
The recipe contest has its own trail of venues, and the venues must not be collapsed into one. In the 2023 layer, dishes and recipes were dropped off at the Historic Burgaw Train Depot on South Dickerson Street on Friday morning, with public viewing from nine to eleven in the morning and winners announced at Saturday’s opening ceremony at noon. In the 2009 press layer, the contest’s venue was the Pender County Agricultural Building on South Walker Street.
The barbecue cook-off, car and truck show, and pageant elements run through the standing spine, but their entry fees are unpublished in the texts fetched for every year, and none is asserted here. A dated fundraiser fee is fenced to its old layer only: in 2011, twenty teams of four golfers each paid a one hundred dollar entry fee for the Blueberry Open golf tournament, whose proceeds went to the Burgaw Chamber of Commerce’s scholarship programme in that layer.
Planning Your Visit
Finding the Festival Without a Fairground
There is no fairground in any source fetched, and none is invented here. The festival is held in different locations on and around the historic courthouse square, in downtown Burgaw. The courthouse square layer gives the courthouse’s own address as 100 South Wright Street, never as a festival office.
A second address form must not be merged with it. The listing and tourism layers publish 106 East Wilmington Street, Burgaw, as the festival’s address. That street address is the same as Pender County Tourism’s Burgaw office in the tourism layers, a listing and contact address form, never the festival’s grounds. The Association’s mailing address, Post Office Box 1554, Burgaw, is a mailbox, never a venue.
Component venues are fenced to their layers and are never the festival’s grounds. The Historic Burgaw Train Depot on South Dickerson Street is the recipe-contest venue in the 2023 layer. The Pender County Agricultural Building on South Walker Street is the contest’s venue in the 2009 layer. Mission Baptist Church parking on South Walker Street is the farm-tour shuttle pick-up in the 2026 Events page and in the 2023 layer. The Horticulture Crops Research Farm in Castle Hayne is the tours’ destination, an N.C. State research farm in New Hanover County, outside Burgaw and outside Pender County.
Admission, Rides, and Farm Tours
Festival admission is free, documented across the modern layers, each in its own words and year: free admission in a 2026 planning layer, free to attend in a 2025 layer, admission is free in a 2025 sponsored story, and admission is free in a 2018 layer for the fifteenth annual. The free posture has a documented limit, fenced to its 2025 layer: admission free, with some activities and rides requiring tickets. No ride-ticket amount is verified in any layer fetched.
Farm-tour money stands in direct conflict between two layers and may never be blended or settled. A 2023 layer describes tours of the Horticulture Crops Research Farm in Castle Hayne running every hour between half past eight and half past eleven in the morning on Saturday, from the Mission Baptist Church parking lot, and says these tours cost five dollars. Against that, a locals’ guide layer says attendees can sign up for a free tour led by NC State Cooperative Extension researchers. Neither may be printed as the tour’s settled price, and the tour’s price for 2025, 2026, and 2027 is unverified.
Entry fees for the 5K and one-mile fun run and for the Tour de Blueberry are likewise unverified, though both are documented as programme across the layers. Prices found in search results for a New Jersey winery run belong to that other event entirely, and they are quarantined here. The Association’s sponsorship packet publishes no visitor price, and parking terms are not documented as a festival term.
A Sample Weekend
Arrive on Friday evening for the kickoff concert. On Saturday morning, be in place before nine for the grounds opening, the morning run and bike ride, and the first main-stage sets. Spend the middle of the day among the vendors, catch the children’s activities on Courthouse Avenue, and stay into the evening for the closing set.
How It Compares
Compared with a county fair, this festival is deliberately urban and open. A county fair fences a fairground, charges admission, and centres agricultural exhibits and livestock. Burgaw’s festival charges nothing to enter, fences no fairground, and centres a courthouse square and a downtown street fair. The queue title names a festival, not a county fair, and no fair is invented behind it.
Visitor Checklist
- Arrive Friday evening for the kickoff concert
- Be in place before nine on Saturday
- Expect free admission, with some rides ticketed
- Budget separately for rides, food, and run or ride entry
- Check the year’s farm-tour price before assuming it is free or five dollars
- Find the courthouse square first, then the street fair around it
- Remember there is no festival camping
- Remember the 2027 dates are a save-the-date range only so far
Beyond the Festival Grounds
Burgaw rewards a slower look beyond the square. It is a small county-seat town, chosen for that role in 1877, with a historic downtown that the festival itself uses as its venue. Stroll the reopened downtown streets and take in the compact square and depot area.
Why It Matters
The festival matters because it ties a town’s identity to a crop in public, free of charge, on the ground where the town governs itself. Its history is honestly divided: an Association that says 2003, a town resolution that says June 26, 2004, and edition billings that fit the second date and not the first.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the North Carolina Blueberry Festival free to attend?
Yes, for festival admission. The modern layers document free admission across 2018, 2025, and 2026. Some activities and rides require tickets, and no ride-ticket amount is verified, so budget separately for rides and food.
Where is the festival held?
In historic downtown Burgaw, centred on the Pender County courthouse square, with activities on and around the square and on Courthouse Avenue. Burgaw is the county seat of Pender County and hosts the festival. There is no fairground.
When was the festival founded?
The sources do not agree, so no settled founding year is asserted here. The Association’s own pages say 2003, while the Town of Burgaw’s resolution recites a first annual festival on June 26, 2004, and the edition billings for 2007, 2018, and 2025 fit a 2004 start.
Is festival camping available in Burgaw?
No camping is documented as a festival offer. No camping, recreational vehicle, or overnight-stay offer for this festival appears on the festival’s own site, in its sponsorship packet, or in the press layers fetched.
What to Expect From the Next Pender County North Carolina NC Blueberry Festival
How often is Pender County North Carolina NC Blueberry Festival held?
The festival is an annual event, held every year on the third weekend of June, shaped as a Friday kickoff plus a main Saturday.
When is the next Pender County North Carolina NC Blueberry Festival?
The next edition billed on the festival’s homepage is the June 18 to 19, 2027 save-the-date, with its text naming June 19 as the main day. No 2027 programme, hours, or prices are published in the texts fetched. The most recent documented edition ran Friday, June 19 and Saturday, June 20, 2026.
Will the dates change?
The dates move every year because the festival follows the third weekend of June rather than a fixed calendar date: June 19 and 20 in 2026, June 20 and 21 in 2025, and June 15 and 16 in 2018.
The festival ends with a small town gathered around its courthouse square, celebrating a berry first cultivated in its own county in the 1930s.
