Eastside Arts Festival 2026

PRESS RELEASE

Discover the Eastside Arts District’s Vibrant Multidisciplinary Arts Scene at
Expanded 6th Annual Eastside Arts Festival

Explore Vancouver’s Eastside neighbourhoods through an increased number of artist-led walking tours and workshops, as well as a free, all-ages party at MacLean Park

Vancouver, BC — Eastside Arts Society returns with an expanded 6th edition of its summer celebration of Eastside artists, the Eastside Arts Festival. Taking place July 17–26, 2026, the festival spans neighbourhoods, parks, studios, and breweries across the Eastside Arts District, and includes an all-day outdoor music event at MacLean Park. A district-wide celebration of the artists, cultural spaces, and the creative communities that continue to shape Vancouver’s Eastside, this year’s festival invites people to experience the community in hands-on and unexpected ways through soundwalks, artist-led workshops, public art tours, immersive performances, and live music. 

“As the Eastside Arts Festival enters its 6th year, I’m continually inspired by the creative energy, experimentation, and sense of community that exists across the Eastside Arts District,” says Sierra MacTavish, Programs and Development Manager at the Eastside Arts Society. “What makes the Eastside so special is the density of creativity that exists here–artist studios, community spaces, and longstanding cultural histories all existing side by side. At its heart, the festival is about creating opportunities for people to move through the neighbourhood differently, encounter moments of wonder, and connect more deeply with the artists, spaces, and communities that continue to shape Vancouver’s cultural landscape.”

This year’s festival will bring back its popular series of neighbourhood walking tours for the second time, featuring an enhanced number of new offerings in 2026, including artist-led tours across various Eastside communities, such as Chinatown, Strathcona, and Commercial Drive, and featuring a wide variety of topics: photography, soundwalking (an active listening experience that focuses on sonic environments), public art, and a choose-your-own-adventure format heritage tour. Walking tour guides include: Hogan’s Alley Society, Bill Yuen of Heritage Vancouver, and local artists Kate MacDonald, Jorma Kujala, Wendy D, and Candice Weber.

The festival will also introduce a series of new unique and affordable art-making workshops–including potted plant portrait painting, floral watercolour still-lifes, glass frit fusing, ceramic mini house creations, and a plein air drawing tour–to complement returning favourites: eco-printing, indigo dyeing, textile printmaking, lino landscapes, goldwork embroidery, landscape painting, and porcelain slip casting. Workshops will be hosted by Eastside artists at a variety of venues, including artist studios, local breweries and distilleries: Luppolo Brewing Co, East Van Brewing Company, Superflux Beer Company, and Odd Society Spirits. The plein air drawing workshop will take place at Strathcona Park. Workshop instructors include: Terminal City Glass Co-op, Naomi Yamamoto, Christina Radvak, Janine Schroedter, Candice Weber, Serena Chu, Dima Gurevich, Sunfire Studios Inc., Tara Pople, Pilar Mehlis, and Sonya Iwasiuk.

On July 18, the festival will hold a live, interactive performance installation, The Whitty Wily Poetry Connection, hosted by artist Claire Davis at the Kamloops x Hastings Plaza from 12-2pm. Poetry is generated, performed, and playfully disrupted in real time. Audiences are invited to participate in spontaneous acts of writing, composing poems from unexpected objects, co-creating absurd or sincere texts, and amplifying their voices through analogue spectacle.

On July 25, the festival will host its annual free, all-day outdoor event, at MacLean Park, in collaboration with the Rickshaw Theatre, and presented by the Strathcona BIA. The event features live music, public art activities, food trucks (Dos Amigos, Stik Pop, Midnight Joe’s, and Chickpea), and a beer garden hosted by Strange Fellows Brewing, from 3-8pm. Performers include: DJ Jody Glenham, alt-country solo project Big Rig, longtime Vancouver musician Stephen Hamm: Theremin Man, neo-dance psychedelia band Wack, and grunge pop quartet Buddie. Free all-ages public art activities will include a collaborative collage led by Enabling Arts, a kid-friendly writer’s prompt led by The Writer’s Exchange on-site, and an accessible art activity featuring recycled materials led by Alternative Creations Studio. The event will also feature an Art Shop showcasing work by local artists such as ceramics, prints, paintings, textiles, apparel, and mixed-media works. Come early and enjoy the Strathcona Blocks Party, taking place on the 800 block of East Hastings Street from 12:00–5:00 PM, before heading over to MacLean Park for the Eastside Arts Festival Concert in the Park from 3:00–5:00 PM.

This year’s Eastside Arts Festival will also participate in two co-presentations: The popular outdoor summer series, The Dance Deck, performing on July 18, 19, 25, and 26, produced by and hosted in the Eastside backyard of Belle Spirale Dance Projects Artistic Directors Sylvain Senez and Alexis Fletcher, and MacLean Park Music, an afternoon of free music at MacLean Park on July 26, featuring local performers Mizz Lisa, Lyndsay Wills & the No Frills String Band, and Sinéad X Sanders.

Art workshop tickets range from $35-$55, walking tours are $20, and The Dance Deck tickets are $40-$70. For a full festival schedule and to purchase event tickets, visit eastsideartsfest.ca.

The Eastside Arts Festival is made possible through the generous support of Onni, Beedie, PCI, Strathcona BIA, East Village BIA, Strange Fellows Brewing, City of Vancouver, Province of BC Community Gaming Grants, the Government of Canada, Rickshaw Theatre, Stir, The Georgia Straight, Showhub, and Jon Benjamin Photography. 

Tickets are now available for the 4th Annual Eastside Arts Society Contemporary Art Raffle, featuring one-of-a-kind artworks. This fundraiser supports the Eastside Arts Society’s year-round programming, including the Eastside Arts Festival, Eastside Culture Crawl, the Eastside Arts District, and Studio 101 youth workshops. This year’s raffle features nine original artworks generously donated by local artists, including main draw prizes by Ian Wallace, David Tycho, Nikki Baxendale, and Lisa Ochowycz.

Tickets are on sale from June 3 to October 14, with early bird draws on August 7 and September 18, and the final draw on October 15. Only 165 tickets are available. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit https://contemporaryartraffle.rafflenexus.com.

About the Eastside Arts Society (eastsideartssociety.ca)
The Eastside Arts Society (EAS) is a visual and performing arts organization dedicated to connecting the public with the arts. EAS produces the annual Eastside Culture Crawl Visual Arts, Design and Craft Festival, now celebrating its 30th year. Held each November, the festival features artists across Vancouver’s Eastside opening their studios to the public and includes painters, jewellers, sculptors, furniture makers, weavers, potters, printmakers, photographers, and glassblowers, ranging from emerging artists to those with international recognition. The Culture Crawl is complemented by a range of associated programming, including the Talking Art artist panel series, the Moving Art film and video art series, juried exhibitions, Studio 101 free arts workshops for school groups held in Eastside Culture Crawl artist studios, and an annual week-long Indigenous Artist Residency.

For the past six years, EAS has also produced the Eastside Arts Festival, a multidisciplinary summer festival that celebrates the artists, cultural spaces, and creative communities that make Vancouver’s Eastside Arts District unique.

EAS is also leading the development of the Eastside Arts District (EAD), a long-term initiative focused on protecting and strengthening arts and cultural production spaces in East Vancouver. Through advocacy, promotion, research, and community-building, EAD supports a more sustainable and vibrant creative future for Vancouver’s Eastside.

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Photos by Jon Pesochin

Angela Poon
apoon@mpmgarts.com
604.569.5343

Website: eastsideartssociety.ca
Twitter: @eastsideartssoc
Facebook: @eastsideartsociety
Instagram: @eastsideartssociety