Dallas County Alabama Selma Renaissance Faire Festival

Most festivals borrow a field for a weekend and vanish by Monday. This one built itself a town. On twenty acres of Dallas County countryside, just outside the historic city of Selma, a permanent site recreates a highland Scottish settlement called Dalwhinnie, with the year fixed at 1400, and for a handful of weekends each spring the gates open on jousting knights, fire performers, jugglers and crowds who have driven out from Selma and well beyond it.

The event’s own name is the Selma Renaissance Faire, the name used on its official site. This article’s title adds the county and the word festival, following the sheet form used for this series, but the faire itself is billed simply as the Selma Renaissance Faire, and the organiser-side paperwork styles the body behind it as Selma Ren-Faire Inc. Both forms are recorded here exactly as published.

Selma is the county seat of Dallas County, and the faire belongs to the county’s calendar even though its grounds sit outside the historic city. The official site describes the site as just 14 miles outside historic Selma, yet the address it publishes is a Selma address. What follows sets out what the record supports about this young, fast-growing faire: its setting, its editions so far, what happens inside the gates, and the honest gaps in what has been published, including the absence of any official admission price.

About the Festival

The Selma Renaissance Faire is a Renaissance-themed festival held each spring at Dalwhinnie Fields, its permanent site at 1515 Pine Flat Church Road, Selma, Alabama 36701. That address appears both on the official site’s homepage and in the organiser’s own 2026 merchant application, and the application confirms this is a permanent site, not a rented fairground dressed up for the occasion.

The setting is billed in the site’s own words as “20 acres of the middle ages… transported back to the year 1400 in the highland scottish town of Dalwhinnie.” Visitors walk not through a generic medieval village but through a named fictional town with a fixed year and a Scottish highland identity.

For a useful comparison, see the Dallas County Alabama Selma Wild Game Cook Off Festival for another county festival.

The faire runs across multiple weekends in late March and early April. How many weekends is a question the record refuses to settle into a single number: the 2025 edition ran two weekends, the 2026 edition ran three, and the 2027 edition is billed for three as well. Each edition is recorded here inside its own layer, because presenting any one figure as permanent would misstate the others.

Behind the event sits Selma Ren-Faire Inc, the organiser-side name used in the faire’s own paperwork. A listing aggregator has named a different organiser for a 2026 listing, but that name comes only from the aggregator layer and is never adopted here over the organiser’s own form.

Quick Facts

Detail	Information
Event’s own name	Selma Renaissance Faire
Organiser-side body	Selma Ren-Faire Inc
Host town	Selma, the county seat of Dallas County
Venue	Dalwhinnie Fields, a permanent site
Address as published	1515 Pine Flat Church Road, Selma, Alabama 36701
Setting as billed	A highland Scottish town called Dalwhinnie, set in the year 1400
Site size	Twenty acres, about fourteen miles outside historic Selma
2026 dates	March 21 and 22, March 28 and 29, and April 4 and 5
2027 dates as billed	March 20–21, March 27–28, and April 3–4
Admission price	No official price published anywhere in the record

History

The faire’s documented history is short, and it is told here without inflating it. No founding year appears anywhere in the official material checked, and the article does not supply one. What exists instead is a sequence of dated editions, each with its own published details, and a growth pattern readable from those editions without being converted into claims the sources never made.

The earliest edition in the record is the 2025 faire. A faire guide records its dates as March 29–30 and April 5–6, 2025, which makes the 2025 edition a two-weekend event. That guide layer is the source for the 2025 dates, and nothing in it says how many weekends later editions would run.

The 2026 edition is documented much more fully, because the organiser’s own 2026 merchant application survives in the record. It gives the dates as March 21 and 22, March 28 and 29, and April 4 and 5, 2026, describes the faire in its own words as “a 3-weekend event,” and set a merchant setup day on Thursday, March 19, 2026. The same application supplies the venue address and the entertainment billing below.

The 2027 edition already has a published shape. The official site currently bills the event as “SELMA RENAISSANCE FAIRE III, 2027,” with weekend dates of March 20–21, March 27–28, and April 3–4. The Roman numeral is recorded here exactly as billed. It is tempting to read a founding year backwards out of that numeral, but the record does not support the arithmetic, and this article does not pretend otherwise.

Read together, the three layers show an event expanding quickly: two weekends became three between 2025 and 2026, and the three-weekend shape has been carried into the 2027 billing. Growth is a fair reading of the layers; a founding date is not in them, and none is claimed.

What to Expect

The fullest picture of the programme comes from the organiser’s 2026 merchant application. It is a billing rather than a review, so it is presented as what the faire sets out to offer. Combat and spectacle lead the list: jousting knights and medieval fighters headline the action side, giving Dalwhinnie its clashing centrepieces across the day.

Street entertainment fills the ground between the set pieces. Magicians, jesters and jugglers work the lanes, fire performances add the drama Renaissance audiences expect, and Renaissance music and minstrels keep the year-1400 atmosphere audible as well as visible. Games of skill invite visitors to stop spectating and take part.

Around the entertainment stands the marketplace. The merchant application distinguishes ordinary vendors from food and drink vendors, and it is on the food side that the faire’s one firm money figure appears: a food merchant fee of three hundred dollars per weekend. That figure is a charge to merchants for their place at the faire. It is not, and must never be read as, a price of admission for visitors.

On what a visitor pays at the gate, the record is simply silent. No official admission price was found on the official site or in the organiser paperwork checked, so this article states none. A resale marketplace figure that circulates for this event is boilerplate from the resale layer and is not used here.

Planning Your Visit

The faire’s permanent address is the anchor for any trip: Dalwhinnie Fields, 1515 Pine Flat Church Road, Selma, Alabama 36701. The site lies about fourteen miles outside historic Selma, so the drive out is part of the outing, and visitors should fold the rural approach roads into their timing rather than treating the faire as a downtown Selma stop.

The exact weekends belong to each edition’s own layer: March 21 and 22, March 28 and 29, and April 4 and 5 in 2026; March 20–21, March 27–28, and April 3–4 as billed for 2027. Choosing early matters because a three-weekend run still offers only six days of faire in a year.

Hours are the weakest-published part of the record. The official sources checked do not publish gate hours at all. An aggregator lists 10 a.m.–6 p.m. for Saturday, March 28, 2026, but that figure comes from the aggregator layer alone and is repeated here only so readers know it is not official. Visitors who need certainty should await the faire’s own announcement.

Money planning has to work around the same gap. Carry a flexible budget for the gate, set aside spending money for the food and drink vendors and the marketplace, and remember that the one price in the record, the three hundred dollars per weekend food merchant fee, is something merchants pay, not something visitors are charged.

A Sample Day at the Faire

Arrive in the earlier part of the day on a chosen Saturday, bearing the aggregator’s unofficial hours in mind with caution, while the lanes of Dalwhinnie are still easy to walk. The fourteen-mile drive puts breakfast in Selma within easy reach before the run out to Pine Flat Church Road.

Give the middle of the day to the spectacle. Jousting and the medieval fighters are the programme’s centrepieces, so plan the wandering around them: minstrels and Renaissance music in the lanes between bouts, a magician or juggler holding a crowd at a corner, and a first pass through the vendors to note which stalls deserve a second look.

Let the afternoon slow down. Try the games of skill, watch for a fire performance as the day leans later, and make the return pass through the marketplace with time to browse. Eat from the food and drink vendors on site rather than leaving the grounds. End with the drive back through Dallas County farmland while the light lasts.

How This Faire Compares

Most Renaissance festivals in the American South travel. They rent a site, raise a temporary village for a season of weekends, and strike the sets when the run ends. This faire breaks that pattern in one fundamental way: its merchant application confirms a permanent site, so Dalwhinnie stays standing between editions, and the town visitors walk through in one spring is recognisably the same town the next.

The comparison runs in the other direction on documentation. Larger, older faires publish gate hours, admission tiers and entertainment schedules in exhaustive detail. This faire’s official record, in the sources checked, publishes its dates and its merchant terms but no gate hours and no admission price at all. It is easier to verify what a merchant pays to sell food here than what a visitor pays to walk in, an inversion that says more about the event’s youth than about its ambitions.

Its billing habit is distinctive too. The 2027 edition carries a Roman numeral, “SELMA RENAISSANCE FAIRE III,” while the documented editions show a weekend count that has already changed once. The faire presents itself with the confidence of an institution and the paperwork of a startup.

Planning Checklist

• Pick a weekend from the current edition’s own published dates, not an earlier year’s pattern
• Note the address: Dalwhinnie Fields, 1515 Pine Flat Church Road, Selma, Alabama 36701
• Allow time for the roughly fourteen-mile drive out from historic Selma
• Treat opening hours as unverified unless they come from the faire itself
• Budget for admission as an unknown, since no official price has been published
• Carry spending money for food and drink vendors and the marketplace
• Dress for a full day outdoors on open ground
• Plan one pass for performances and a second, slower pass for shopping
• Recheck the faire’s own announcements close to the chosen weekend

Beyond the Faire Grounds

The trip out to Dalwhinnie pairs naturally with Selma itself. The county seat, about fourteen miles from the site, is a small city with a heavyweight place in American history, known above all for the voting rights marches of 1965 and the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and a visitor who has come this far owes the town more than a fuel stop.

Selma’s historic downtown rewards the same slow walking the faire encourages. The riverfront, the old commercial streets and the civil rights sites sit close together, and the contrast is part of the trip’s value: a morning inside a lovingly invented Scottish town in the year 1400, and an afternoon in a real Alabama town whose actual past changed the country.

Why the Selma Renaissance Faire Matters

A permanent Renaissance site is a serious commitment in a county of Selma’s size. Renting a field spreads risk; building a town concentrates it. Selma Ren-Faire Inc’s paperwork shows an organisation willing to hold that risk, publishing merchant terms and billing future editions while the current one is barely finished. That willingness is the faire’s real significance for Dallas County: a recurring spring anchor event with fixed infrastructure, of a kind rural counties rarely establish.

The growth in the record supports the reading. Weekend counts rising from two to three, a 2027 edition already billed with dates, and a programme spanning jousting to fire performance all point to an event building an audience rather than defending one. If the crowds keep coming out Pine Flat Church Road, the faire gives Selma something it has not historically had alongside its solemn history: a celebration that is purely, deliberately fun.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the Selma Renaissance Faire held at a permanent site?

Yes. The organiser’s own 2026 merchant application confirms Dalwhinnie Fields is a permanent site, which is why the town can stand between editions instead of being rebuilt each spring.

Why is no ticket price given for this faire?

Because none exists in the official record. No admission price was found on the official site or in the organiser paperwork checked, and the only firm figure available, three hundred dollars per weekend, is a food merchant fee charged to vendors. The gap is stated plainly rather than filled with an invented price.

What does the “III” in the 2027 billing mean?

Only what it says. The official site bills the 2027 event as “SELMA RENAISSANCE FAIRE III, 2027,” and this article records that billing as billed. The documented editions do not add up to a clean founding year, so no start date is derived from the numeral.

Which weekend should a first-time visitor choose?

Any of the published weekends for the current edition will carry the full billing of jousting, music, street entertainment and vendors. Pick by the calendar, checking the edition’s own dates, since the weekend count has changed before: two weekends in 2025, three in 2026 and three billed for 2027.

What to Expect From the Next Dallas County Alabama Selma Renaissance Faire Festival

How often is Dallas County Alabama Selma Renaissance Faire Festival held?

It returns each spring across a short run of weekends in late March and early April. The shape of each run is set edition by edition, though, so the number of weekends should be confirmed from the billing for the year in question rather than assumed from the year before.

When is the next Dallas County Alabama Selma Renaissance Faire Festival?

The next edition in the record is the one billed as “SELMA RENAISSANCE FAIRE III, 2027,” with weekends of March 20–21, March 27–28, and April 3–4, 2027 at Dalwhinnie Fields. Those dates come from the official site’s current billing and stand as published.

Will the dates change?

Dates here have shifted between editions before, since the run itself changed length when the 2026 edition expanded to three weekends. The 2027 weekends are the faire’s own published billing, but visitors planning travel around them should recheck the announcements as the season approaches.

For a county better known for the weight of its real history, Dalwhinnie offers something rarer than nostalgia: a fictional past, built to last, on twenty acres of ground. The faire is young, imperfectly documented and plainly ambitious, and its next spring of weekends is already on the calendar.