Miller County Georgia Colquitt Mayhaw Festival

Every April, the downtown square in Colquitt fills for a single spring Saturday devoted to the mayhaw, and the event that draws the crowd carries a grander published name than the one on this page. In its formal billings the festival is the National Mayhaw Festival, run by the local chamber of commerce on the third weekend of April. The title above follows the sheet form, Colquitt Mayhaw Festival, which simply prefixes the town’s name to the shorter everyday version of the same event.

Colquitt is the county seat of Miller County, and an encyclopaedia article about the county adds two distinctions that frame the festival’s setting: Colquitt is the county’s only incorporated area, and the legislature designated it the seat back in 1856. A one-town county holding its signature celebration on the square at its centre is the picture every recent layer paints.

About the Festival

The organiser is the chamber of commerce, although the layers print its name in more than one shape. Organiser and news layers use the hyphenated Colquitt-Miller County Chamber of Commerce, the chamber’s own site and its parade application forms print Colquitt Miller County Chamber of Commerce without the hyphen, and a festival-listing layer shortens the whole thing to Colquitt Chamber of Commerce. This article keeps all three forms as their layers give them rather than settling on one.

The published name behaves the same way. Formal billings never drop the word National, so the National Mayhaw Festival is the name the chamber, the local newspaper and a festival-listing layer all carry. A shorter Mayhaw Festival appears as the chamber’s own short form and in the encyclopaedia’s county article, and the sheet title’s Colquitt Mayhaw Festival is the town-prefixed form of that same name rather than a separate event.

One credit needs careful fencing. Documents for the festival parade name the City of Colquitt and the Mayhaw Festival Parade Committee as co-sponsors, but they name them for the parade only. Neither body is promoted here to organiser of the festival itself, which remains the chamber’s event in every layer that assigns the role.

For a useful comparison, see the Meriwether County Georgia Warm Springs Fall Festival for another county festival.

Quick Facts

Item	Detail
Published name	National Mayhaw Festival, in every formal billing
Shorter form	Mayhaw Festival, used by the chamber and an encyclopaedia article
Host town	Colquitt, county seat and only incorporated area of Miller County
Organiser	The chamber of commerce, printed in hyphenated and unhyphenated forms
Annual timing	Third weekend in April, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Venue in current layers	The Historic Downtown Square in Colquitt
Venue in the encyclopaedia layer	Spring Creek Park, an older or differing form
Most recent documented edition	The forty-third annual, Saturday, April 18, 2026
Next announced edition	The forty-fourth annual, Saturday, April 17, 2027
Admission	One dollar, as a festival-listing layer prints it

History

No gathered source states the year this festival began, and this article does not manufacture one. What the record offers instead is a run of anniversary billings, and billings are how an event advertises itself, not a founding certificate. The parade application layer ties the fortieth billing to Saturday, April 15, 2023. A listing layer bills the edition of Saturday, April 19, 2025 as the forty-second, the local newspaper bills Saturday, April 18, 2026 as the forty-third, and the chamber bills Saturday, April 17, 2027 as the forty-fourth. Read together, those numbers suggest a long-running event, but counting backwards from any of them to declare a first year would be arithmetic dressed up as evidence, so the founding stays unrecorded here.

The sequence also contains an honest gap. Between the fortieth billing in 2023 and the forty-second in 2025 sits the forty-first billing year, 2024, and no layer gathered for this article documents that edition separately. Nothing here fills that space with an invented date or programme; the record simply steps over it, and the gap is worth naming because the surrounding years are comparatively well covered.

The venue has its own unsettled history. The encyclopaedia’s Miller County article states that the Mayhaw Festival is held in April at Spring Creek Park, a form that may preserve an older arrangement or simply differ from current practice. Every recent layer instead puts the festival downtown, so the square is where the documented present-day event happens, while the park wording stands in the record as a differing form that no layer reconciles.

The chamber’s own general statement of the event’s rhythm is plain: the festival belongs to the third weekend in April each year, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. That standing description, rather than any single year’s coverage, is what makes the dated Saturdays legible as editions of one continuing festival.

What to Expect

The day is compact. The chamber’s organiser layer fixes the festival to the third weekend in April each year, running from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., and the documented editions are single Saturdays inside that window. A parade opens the occasion, starting at 10 a.m. in the chamber’s parade layer, which also produced one weather detail worth fencing precisely: a tentative rain date of April 25, 2026 was printed for the parade. That fallback belonged to the parade alone, and it is not presented here as a rain date for the festival as a whole.

Around the square, the programme layers describe a familiar small-town fair assembled from several witnesses. The encyclopaedia credits the festival with an arts-and-crafts show. The chamber’s layer for the announced 2027 edition lists food, music, exhibits and children’s activities. A festival-listing layer’s general description adds exhibitors in antiques and collectibles, commercial and retail goods, corporate and information displays and homegrown products, together with fifteen food booths and one stage of regional and local talent. That catalogue is the listing’s standing description of the event rather than a count taken at any single edition. Because the newspaper describes the festival as occupying all four sides of the interior square, the grounds read as one walkable circuit rather than a single field, with booths, exhibits and the stage held inside the same downtown frame.

Crowd expectations come with a label attached. The chamber’s 2027 layer invites readers to join more than three thousand five hundred friends, neighbours and festival fans, which is an organiser’s invitation claim written to welcome people in. No counted attendance figure for any edition appears in the record, so that warm wording is reported as an invitation, never as a measured crowd.

Planning Your Visit

Aim for the square and aim early. The documented Saturdays run only from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., and the parade steps off right at the opening hour, so arriving after mid-morning trades the day’s signature procession for its aftermath. The grounds in current layers are the Historic Downtown Square, described by the local newspaper in 2026 as filling all four sides of the interior Downtown Square, and an event-listing layer in 2025 placed the festival in the Colquitt Town Square Historic District. Visitors who encounter the encyclopaedia’s Spring Creek Park wording should treat it as the older or differing form the record leaves unresolved, and follow the current layers to downtown.

Money expectations need the same care as directions. A festival-listing layer prints admission tickets at one dollar, yet no admission price from the chamber’s own pages was captured in the gathered record. That means the one-dollar figure is a listing’s price, useful as a hint about the event’s modest scale, but it should not be quoted as the organiser’s settled admission policy. Food booths, exhibits and the arts-and-crafts show are the documented reasons to carry small cash, whatever the gate arrangement turns out to be.

A Sample Itinerary

Arrive at the square before 10 a.m. on the festival Saturday and claim a spot along the parade route, because the parade starts at the same hour the festival opens. Once the procession passes, drift into the arts-and-crafts show and work around the four sides of the square at an unhurried pace, pausing at the exhibits the chamber’s programme promises.

Give the middle of the day to the food booths and the stage, where regional and local talent performs, and let children spend their energy on the activities set aside for them. Because the documented day ends at 3 p.m., finish with a slow final circuit for any purchases you postponed, and be content that five hours is the festival’s whole shape rather than a shortened version of it.

How It Compares

Colquitt keeps other celebrations that share vocabulary with this one without sharing its identity. Harvest Days, also printed as Fall Harvest Days in county planning and city-profile layers, is a separate fall event in Colquitt, and nothing about its autumn billing belongs to this April festival. The April Flower Show shares the same month and town yet remains its own separate occasion, distinct from the mayhaw celebration on the square.

The town’s famous Swamp Gravy also deserves a clear boundary. It is a folklife play, a theatre programme rooted in local storytelling, and Colquitt bills itself the Mayhaw Capital of the World. Both are town context that explains the community’s character, and the play in particular colours any visit to Colquitt, but Swamp Gravy performances are not part of the festival billing and are never folded into its programme here.

Festival Checklist

• Confirm the third Saturday of April for the year you plan to travel
• Arrive before 10 a.m. so the parade does not pass without you
• Head for the Historic Downtown Square, following current layers over the encyclopaedia’s older park wording
• Treat the one-dollar admission figure as a listing’s price, not chamber policy
• Carry small cash for food booths and arts-and-crafts purchases
• Keep children close during the parade and steer them toward the children’s activities afterwards
• Remember the day ends at 3 p.m. and plan purchases before the final hour

Beyond the Festival

A trip to Colquitt offers the rare clarity of a county with exactly one incorporated town, designated the seat in 1856 and still the centre of Miller County life. The Mayhaw Capital of the World billing gives the town its edible emblem, and the Swamp Gravy folklife play gives it a storytelling stage that draws admirers of community theatre in its own right. Both belong to the town rather than to the festival, and either can round out a spring weekend built around the Saturday on the square. The festival’s five-hour Saturday also sits comfortably beside a slower look at the town itself, since the square is Colquitt’s historic core and the same ground the celebration borrows each April, so a visitor who lingers after 3 p.m. is still standing in the middle of the story the day has been telling.

Why the Festival Matters

For a county seat that is also its county’s only incorporated community, a chamber-run festival on the square is more than entertainment. It concentrates the county’s spring sociability into five documented hours, gives local exhibitors and food vendors a shared storefront, and anchors Colquitt’s mayhaw identity in an event outsiders can actually attend. The record behind it is imperfect, with a missing founding year, an undocumented forty-first edition and two venue forms that never quite agree, yet the festival’s continuity is plainly visible in the billings that march from the fortieth to the forty-fourth without interruption in the recent layers. Its announced forty-fourth billing for 2027, published while the forty-third edition was still the most recent one held, shows an organiser planning in public and expecting the square to fill again.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does the published name include the word National?

Because every formal billing uses it. The chamber, the local newspaper and a festival-listing layer all print National Mayhaw Festival, and no layer drops National in a formal billing. Mayhaw Festival survives as the chamber’s short form and the encyclopaedia article’s wording, while the sheet title’s Colquitt Mayhaw Festival prefixes the town name to that shorter version. The three forms name one event, not three.

Has the festival always taken place on the downtown square?

No layer gathered answers that outright. Current layers agree on the square: a listing layer gives Downtown Square, the local newspaper in 2026 describes the Historic Downtown Square filling all four sides of its interior, and a 2025 event-listing layer uses Colquitt Town Square Historic District. Against them, the encyclopaedia’s county article says the festival is held in April at Spring Creek Park. That park form may be older or may simply differ, and this article records both instead of choosing silently.

Is one dollar really the price of getting in?

It is the price a festival-listing layer prints for admission tickets, and it is reported here only with that fence around it. No admission price published by the chamber itself was captured in the gathered layers, so the one-dollar figure cannot be confirmed as the organiser’s own policy. What it reliably suggests is the event’s small, community scale; what it does not do is settle what a visitor will be charged.

What happened to the forty-first annual edition in 2024?

Nothing that the gathered record can describe. The billings step from the fortieth in 2023 to the forty-second in 2025, and no layer collected for this article documents a 2024 edition on its own. The honest answer is that the forty-first billing year exists by implication in the sequence while its date, programme and details go unrecorded here, and inventing them would misrepresent the evidence.

What to Expect From the Next Miller County Georgia Colquitt Mayhaw Festival

How often is Miller County Georgia Colquitt Mayhaw Festival held?

The chamber’s organiser layer places it on the third weekend in April each year, within a single day running from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The documented editions follow that pattern as individual Saturdays, in 2023, 2025 and 2026, with the 2024 billing year passing undocumented in the gathered layers.

When is the next Miller County Georgia Colquitt Mayhaw Festival?

The chamber has announced Saturday, April 17, 2027, billed as the forty-fourth annual edition. That date may be treated as the organiser-announced next edition. Nothing in the record announces any later date, so no edition beyond 2027 is stated here as confirmed.

Will the dates change?

The third-weekend-in-April placement has held steady across every documented layer, which makes a move unlikely, but the parade’s tentative rain date in 2026 shows that weather can bend individual arrangements. Only the chamber’s own announcements should be trusted for a future year’s exact Saturday.

For one spring Saturday, Colquitt’s square becomes the whole county in miniature: a parade at ten, crafts and food until three, and a small red fruit carrying a national name. The record leaves a few questions open, yet the festival it describes is easy to recognise and easier to find.