Centre County Pennsylvania Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts Festival
In the week after Independence Day, downtown State College turns into an open-air gallery, with work along the sidewalks and stages across downtown and campus. The Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts fills five mid-July days with that mixture, and its centrepiece is a juried Sidewalk Sale and Exhibition drawing more than three hundred artists. Visitors walk the streets without passing through any gate.
Bellefonte is the county seat of Centre County, and it does not host this festival. State College hosts it, and State College is the county’s largest borough rather than its seat, The festival occupies the streets of downtown State College and Penn State’s adjacent University Park campus. There is no fairground and no single grounds address.
About the Festival
The Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts is the annual five-day mid-July juried arts festival of State College, built around the juried Sidewalk Sale and Exhibition, live performances, Children and Youth Day, a banner competition and a month-long gallery exhibition. Its own short form is Arts Festival and its abbreviation is CPFA; Arts Fest is a colloquial form, never the formal name. It is not a county fair in any part of its programme.
The organiser is the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts itself, an independent not-for-profit corporation governed by a volunteer Board of Directors drawn from the State College and Penn State communities. Penn State University is a 1967 founder, a campus co-host and the publisher of the annual parking and traffic releases, but never the current organiser, and the State College Chamber of Commerce is the other 1967 founder, in its 1967 form. Grant funders in the festival’s own framing, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Happy Valley Adventure Bureau and the Centre County Commissioners, are funders only. No Inc. suffix was printed in any festival-side layer fetched, so none is supplied here.
Quick Facts
| Point | What the record shows |
| Event | Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts, a five-day juried arts festival |
| Host town | State College, on downtown streets and the University Park campus |
| County seat | Bellefonte, which does not host the festival |
| Organiser | Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts, an independent not-for-profit corporation |
| Standing season | Mid-July, Wednesday through Sunday, the week after Independence Day |
| Admission | No general gate; outdoor entertainment free in 2024 and 2025, indoor events ticketed by hosts |
| First festival | 1967, a nine-day unjuried first edition |
| Sidewalk Sale | Thursday through Sunday inside each festival span, more than 300 artists |
| Camping | No visitor camping term published in the record found |
From Snow Fence to Sidewalk Sale
The festival’s own direct statement fixes the beginning without any arithmetic: founded in 1967 by the State College Chamber of Commerce and Penn State University’s College of Arts and Architecture, in an effort to bring the arts and commerce to the area. This article never derives a founding year from an edition number. The billings stand in their own years only, fifty-eighth annual in 2024, fifty-ninth annual in 2025 and sixtieth annual in 2026, and the sixty-year-history line is anniversary colour, never a date.
For a useful comparison, see the Carbon County Pennsylvania Fair Festival for another county festival.
The first festival was born that summer and lasted nine days, sponsored by Penn State’s College of Arts and Architecture and the State College Chamber of Commerce, and opened by Governor Raymond Shafer, who arrived by helicopter landing on the Old Main Lawn. The first Sidewalk Sale consisted of people hanging work on snow fence along the wall on the southern border of the Old Main Lawn, the show was not juried, and a visitor could even buy kittens. Its span must never be smoothed into a continuous in-person run, because the in-person 2020 festival was cancelled and moved online on its scheduled July 8 through July 12, 2020 dates, with Images and the Banner Competition carried online.
What to Expect
The Sidewalk Sale and Exhibition
More than three hundred artists fill the juried Sidewalk Sale and Exhibition, and the sale span is always shorter than the festival span. In 2024 the festival ran Wednesday, July 10 through Sunday, July 14, while the sale ran Thursday, July 11 through Sunday, July 14, from ten in the morning to seven in the evening Thursday through Saturday and from eleven in the morning to four in the afternoon on Sunday. In 2025 the festival ran Wednesday, July 9 through Sunday, July 13, while the sale ran Thursday, July 10 through Sunday, July 13, on the same hours. In 2026 the festival ran Wednesday, July 8 through Sunday, July 12, while the sale ran Thursday, July 9 through Sunday, July 12. No secondary compressed form for 2024 replaces the Penn State spans.
Stages, Streets and the Campus
The festival’s own framing counts more than sixty performances, while a 2025-derived layer prints above eighty; the two counts stand unmerged. Stages in the 2024 record sat at the Festival Shell on the Old Main Lawn, the Allen Street Stage and Sidney Friedman Park. The 2025 record added two new campus stages at Pollock and Burrowes and at Willard Plaza, and the 2026 dated listings spread acts across the Allen Street, Festival Shell, Pollock and Burrowes, Willard Plaza and Sidney Friedman Park stages. The 2026 listings name the Allen Street Stage, Sidney Friedman Park, the Festival Shell Stage, the State Theatre, and Schlow Library as the Images venue, in their own layers, never combined into a single festival address.
Children and Youth Day and the Grand Procession
Children and Youth Day opens the five-day festival and is never a separate festival. In 2024 it fell on Wednesday, July 10, from ten in the morning to four in the afternoon, with the Grand Procession at four in the afternoon. In 2025 it fell on Wednesday, July 9, from ten in the morning to two in the afternoon, with the Grand Procession at three in the afternoon. In 2026 it fell on Wednesday, July 8, from ten in the morning to two in the afternoon, with the Grand Procession again at three in the afternoon. The procession carries papier-mâché puppets from the Old Main Lawn to Sidney Friedman Park, and the day also carries a Children and Youth Sidewalk Sale of young artists.
Images and the Banner Competition
Images is the month-long juried exhibition of Pennsylvania artists, and its span is an exhibition span rather than festival days. Images 2026 ran July 1 through July 31, 2026, at Schlow Centre Region Library, with a total of one thousand eight hundred dollars in prize money to be awarded at the Images Awards Reception on July 9, 2026, in the festival’s own Images layer. The 2024 breakdown of that total, five-hundred-dollar Best of Show, three two-hundred-dollar category awards, four one-hundred-fifty-dollar merit awards and a one-hundred-dollar student award, belongs to a 2024 republication only and is never carried into 2026. The Banner Competition hangs over Allen Street, with water dumping buckets, street painting, tasting trail tastings, a five-kilometre and ten-mile race, and BookFest in the standing programme.
Planning Your Visit
Getting There and Parking
Parking money in the record is university parking money, never festival money. In Penn State’s 2026 release, visitor parking in the HUB, Nittany and West decks cost two dollars for the first hour and one dollar per additional hour on Wednesday and Sunday, and on Thursday through Saturday two dollars for less than two hours, three dollars for less than three hours, and ten dollars for three to ten hours. A 2025 guide layer gives West Deck parking from two dollars to a maximum of ten dollars for ten hours.
Admission, Split by Year
In 2024, the festival’s own release text announced that wristband and button sales had been eliminated, that all live entertainment hosted by the festival was now outdoors and free for guests, and that a few indoor events were ticketed by their host organisations, such as Happy Valley Improv, the State Theatre and Tempest Productions. No 2024 button price exists to print, because the mechanism was discontinued rather than repriced. Before that change, indoor performances had required buttons or wristbands, and entertainment admission was fifteen dollars in 2023, in a report of the 2024 announcement. That fifteen-dollar figure is 2023 entertainment admission only and must never be printed as a modern price.
In 2025, the festival’s own release text said all live entertainment hosted by the festival continued to be free for guests again that year, with the same host-ticketed exception, naming Roseanne Cash and Superman Cartoons as State Theatre items in that layer. A 2025 guide layer adds an optional extra fee for some performances, without publishing a price, and the State Theatre stood open between performances as a cooling station. An older form describing some performances as requiring a festival button belongs to the pre-2024 layer, not the modern rule. For 2026, Penn State’s release and the festival’s own dated listings publish the programme without any gate, wristband or performance-ticket price, and that silence is recorded as silence: the 2024 and 2025 structure is not re-asserted for 2026 as a priced fact.
Artist, Prize and Activity Money
None of the money in this section is admission money, and the free outdoor entertainment never makes any of it free. In the festival’s own application layers, the 2025 figures stand in their own year: a jury fee of forty dollars, non-refundable, booth fees of five hundred seventy-five dollars for a ten-foot by ten-foot booth and one thousand two hundred fifty dollars for a ten-foot by twenty-foot booth, with more than twenty thousand dollars in Sidewalk Sale prize money. The 2026 layer prints the same figures in its own year, and the two years’ identical figures never merge into a standing fee schedule. A children’s street-painting fee of ten dollars appears in a 2025 guide layer only, for a small street painting of the child’s own making. Race, tasting and store prices are unverified in this record.
A Wednesday-to-Sunday Walk Through Festival Week
Wednesday brings Children and Youth Day and the Grand Procession, Thursday brings the Sidewalk Sale into full swing, and Sunday closes the festival in the afternoon. In 2024 the Cultural Showcase brought music and dance from different cultures to Sidney Friedman Park on July 10, the Felice Brothers appeared at the State Theatre in a ticketed Wednesday listing without a published price, and David Zentner and the Nashville Music Company closed on the Festival Shell Stage on Sunday at three in the afternoon. In 2025 a guide layer records Manny’s Live Performance Space hosting an after-dark programme for the first time, with street painting on Foster Avenue. In 2026 the dated listings name the Nittany Valley Symphony, the Keystone Big Band, the State College Municipal Band, Velveeta and the strolling Grand Falloons, and a listing’s presence in 2026 never rebooks a 2024 or 2025 act.
How the Festival Changed After the Button Ended
Before 2024, entertainment access mixed free outdoor performances with paid indoor performances that required a button or wristband, and the 2023 figure of fifteen dollars captures that older position. Artist fees, prize money and parking all sit outside admission, and the 2026 layers publish no gate or ticket price at all.
Checklist for Festival Week
- Start on Wednesday if children are travelling with you, because the Grand Procession hour changes by year.
- Treat the Sidewalk Sale span as Thursday through Sunday inside the wider festival span.
- Walk the streets and the sale without expecting a gate, and check the host organisation for any indoor event you want.
- Keep the 2023 fifteen-dollar figure in its own year.
- Use the Penn State deck rates for the year you are visiting.
Beyond the Festival Grounds
There is no festival ground to step beyond, so the ground beyond the festival is the town and campus themselves, which continue after the sale booths come down. The county’s agricultural fair at Centre Hall, the same corporation’s separate New Year’s Eve celebration, First Night State College, and a campus astronomy programme, AstroFest, coinciding with festival week are all separate events whose facts are never this festival’s.
Why the Festival Matters to State College
The festival matters because it turns a working college town’s streets into a juried marketplace for more than three hundred artists.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is there a gate or a festival ticket?
No general gate and no festival ticket exist in the record. The streets and the sale are open to walk through, festival-hosted outdoor entertainment was free in 2024 and 2025, and a few indoor events are ticketed by their host organisations. The 2026 layers publish no ticket price, so no 2026 ticket statement is made here.
When does the Sidewalk Sale run?
The Sidewalk Sale runs Thursday through Sunday inside the wider Wednesday-through-Sunday festival span in every documented edition. Children and Youth Day opens the festival on the Wednesday of each span and is never a separate festival.
Who runs the festival?
The Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts itself runs it, as an independent not-for-profit corporation governed by a volunteer Board of Directors. Penn State University and the State College Chamber of Commerce founded it in 1967, but neither is the current organiser.
Can visitors camp at the festival?
No visitor camping term is documented in the record found, so this article cannot say that camping is offered on any terms. The application layers list host housing and recreational-vehicle parking among artist amenities for accepted artists only, with no rate, no location and no public offer, and that amenity is never visitor camping.
What to Expect From the Next Centre County Pennsylvania Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts Festival
How often is Centre County Pennsylvania Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts Festival held?
The festival is an annual five-day mid-July event, held in the week after Independence Day from Wednesday through Sunday, with the Sidewalk Sale running Thursday through Sunday inside that span.
When is the next Centre County Pennsylvania Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts Festival?
The next span is not announced in the layers fetched here, and no date beyond July 8 through July 12, 2026 is asserted here. Later announcements are the place to check.
Will the dates change?
The dates have shifted slightly from year to year within mid-July, while keeping the Wednesday-through-Sunday shape and the Thursday-through-Sunday sale inside it, so a future span should be checked against the next edition’s own announcement.
The festival rewards a visitor who arrives with the year’s own details in hand: the Wednesday opening for children, the Thursday-to-Sunday sale inside the wider festival span, the free outdoor entertainment of 2024 and 2025 with host-ticketed indoor exceptions, and a footprint with no gate and no single address.
