Seventeen festivals with food in the billing
Seventeen of the 122 events in this directory carry a food-festival category tag for 2026. They split into two useful groups. Some are single-subject festivals built around one crop or one dish, which makes them easy to plan a day around because you know exactly what you came for. The rest are agricultural fairs where food is one draw among livestock, competitions and rides.
Below are the single-subject ones in date order, then the fairs where food shares the billing.
April: maple in Somerset County
The Pennsylvania Maple Festival in Meyersdale runs April 18 to 26 and is the first food-tagged event after January's Pennsylvania Farm Show in Harrisburg. It is categorized as food-festival, agricultural and craft, and its listed features include a parade, competitions, crafts and food.
Somerset County gets a second listing later in the year, and in the same town: the Somerset County Fair runs August 21 to 29 in Meyersdale.
September 12: two festivals, one Saturday
The Whoopie Pie Festival in Ronks, Lancaster County, is a single-day event on Saturday, September 12. It is one of only two single-day listings in the entire 2026 directory, and it carries competitions, food and kids' activities.
The same weekend, The Mushroom Festival runs September 12 and 13 in Kennett Square, Chester County, tagged food-festival, family and artisan, with crafts, food and kids' activities listed. Lancaster and Chester are neighboring counties, so pairing the two means either one long Saturday or splitting them across the weekend, with the mushroom festival taking Sunday.
Bean soup in the Susquehanna valleys
The McClure Bean Soup Festival & Fair runs September 14 to 19 in McClure, Snyder County, opening the Monday after the Whoopie Pie weekend. It is tagged food-festival, agricultural and family, with competitions, food and live music listed.
Snyder County then runs two food-adjacent weeks back to back. The Beaver Community Fair in Beaver Springs follows September 20 to 26, and its record is one of only two in this directory with a sourced founding year, listed as established in 1928.
Italian, Irish and Celtic street food
Four cultural festivals carry food-festival tags alongside live music. Bloomfield Little Italy Days runs August 13 to 16 in Pittsburgh and is listed as free admission with food and live music. La Festa Italiana follows in Scranton, September 4 to 7.
The Pittsburgh Irish Festival runs September 11 to 13 with crafts, food and live music. The Celtic Classic Highland Games & Festival in Bethlehem runs September 25 to 27, adding competitions to the same mix.
Musikfest, also in Bethlehem, is the outlier in scale: ten days, July 31 to August 9, tagged music, food-festival and cultural.
October: apple harvest in Adams County
The National Apple Harvest Festival runs nine days in Arendtsville, Adams County, October 3 to 11. It is tagged food-festival, craft and seasonal, with crafts, food, kids' activities and live music listed, and it is the longest single-subject food festival on the 2026 calendar.
Arendtsville is a small town with two listings. The South Mountain Fair occupies the same place July 21 to 25, so Adams County effectively bookends the season.
Fairs where food is one draw among several
Several agricultural fairs carry a food-festival tag too, which is worth knowing if you want the food without a dedicated festival crowd. The Ephrata Fair runs September 22 to 26 in Lancaster County and lists a parade alongside animals, competitions and food. The Goshen Country Fair in West Chester runs July 27 to August 1.
Earlier in the summer, the June Fete Fair in Huntingdon Valley, June 5 to 7, and the Schnecksville Community Fair in Lehigh County, June 16 to 20, both carry food billing. So does the Westmoreland Arts & Heritage Festival in Latrobe, July 2 to 5.
One planning note: at the single-subject festivals, the food is the event and the lines reflect that. At the agricultural fairs, food stands are spread along the midway and around the exhibition halls, which usually means shorter waits and more of the deep-fried standards than the named dish.
The season opens in January
Pennsylvania starts its food-festival year before winter ends. Pennsylvania Farm Show runs January 10 to 17 in Harrisburg and is free to enter, which makes it both the earliest event on this page and one of only two that cost nothing at the gate.
Then the calendar goes quiet for three months. The next entry is Pennsylvania Maple Festival in Meyersdale on April 18, so anyone planning around food festivals specifically has a long gap to work around in late winter.
September carries the year
Seven of the seventeen festivals here fall in September, and the tightest cluster is the weekend of the 11th to the 13th: Pittsburgh Irish Festival September 11 to 13, The Mushroom Festival September 12 to 13 in Kennett Square, and Whoopie Pie Festival September 12 in Ronks. Pittsburgh and Kennett Square sit at opposite ends of the state, roughly five hours apart.
Two cities appear twice. Pittsburgh hosts Bloomfield Little Italy Days in August and the Irish Festival in September. Bethlehem hosts Musikfest from July 31 to August 9 and Celtic Classic Highland Games and Festival from September 25 to 27, which between them bracket the whole late-summer stretch.
The season closes with National Apple Harvest Festival in Arendtsville, October 3 to 11, the longest single run on the list at nine days.
Only two are free to enter
Pennsylvania Farm Show and Bloomfield Little Italy Days are the only two events on this page recorded as free admission. Every other entry charges at the gate, or its organiser has not published a price, so treat an unlisted price as unknown rather than free and check before you travel.
