AUGUSTA, Ga. (WJBF) – The 2026 Arts in the Heart of Augusta Festival will take place September 18-20 at the Augusta Exchange Club Fairgrounds this year, while construction continues on Broad Street.

This year’s theme is “One Big Festival to Support One Small Non-Profit.”

Festival badges will go on sale in mid-July and will be available for purchase at:

• All Richmond County Tag Offices
• Augusta & Co.
• Sacred Heart Cultural Center
• 4P Studios
• The Treehouse
• Relic Coffee

Additional badge sale locations, entertainment schedules, and festival programming are expected to be announced throughout the summer.

“We are incredibly excited about this year’s festival,” said Denise Tucker, Executive Director of the Greater Augusta Arts Council. “Although we’re in a new location, our mission remains the same. We’re creating a beautiful, welcoming, and inspiring festival experience while raising the funds that allow us to serve the arts year-round.”

AUGUSTA, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) – Augusta’s new arena has reached a major construction milestone, with the superstructure steel now complete and crews shifting focus to interior work, according to project officials.

The 10-story facility spans 900 feet and has required 18,000 yards of concrete and 440,000 man hours of labor. Seventh Street, which runs adjacent to the site, is expected to reopen next month as construction progresses.

On schedule and on budget

Brad Usry of the Augusta-Richmond Coliseum Authority said the project remains on track financially and logistically.

“We are on schedule and on budget and that’s the big thing for us,” Usry said.

Usry said the finished building will offer amenities the city’s old coliseum could not, including luxury boxes, low seating, and expanded concession options.

“All the bells and whistles you get with a new arena — the premiere experiences, the luxury boxes, the low seating, the concession options beyond a piece of pizza,” Usry said.

Built to handle any show

Usry said the new arena’s infrastructure was specifically designed to support large-scale productions that exceeded the old coliseum’s capacity.

“If they’re hanging lights, if they’re hanging trapeze, if they’re hanging speakers — the shows were too much for our infrastructure,” Usry said. “This will hold any show you can bring to town.”

What’s the timeline?

Project officials are targeting a partial opening for graduation ceremonies in 2027, with full completion expected in June or July of that year.

“We are shooting for graduation next year, 2027, to be able to facilitate that for the city of Augusta — and we are looking at a final completion for the overall project in June and July of next year,” said Branden, a project official on site.

Usry added: “It’s going to be super nice and what Augusta deserves.”

The new arena will also serve as home to Augusta’s new hockey team. With the building now NCAA-eligible, the city will be able to bid on college sporting events for the first time.

AUGUSTA, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) – As the nation marks 250 years since the Declaration of Independence, one city’s contribution to that history remains easy to overlook.

In Augusta, local patriots and one of the youngest signers of the Declaration helped push the American Revolution forward — from a frontier colony set up as a buffer between South Carolina and Spanish-controlled Florida.

An unlikely signer from humble beginnings

Wedged between medical buildings on the edge of downtown Augusta sits Meadow Garden — the home of George Walton, one of Georgia’s signers of the Declaration of Independence.

“We were not an afterthought in the Revolution. We were a very important part of that Revolution,” said Ransom Schwarzer, director of Meadow Garden and a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Walton’s path to that moment was anything but privileged. Schwarzer said Walton’s father died around the time of his birth, and by age seven he was fully orphaned.

“He didn’t have a fortune. He didn’t have that university education like Thomas Jefferson,” Schwarzer said. “He’s having to pull himself up and make his own way. He had to be incredibly determined.”

That determination carried Walton into politics and eventually into history. He became one of the youngest men to sign the Declaration of Independence.

“George is very distinct in coming from such humble backgrounds and making his own way at such a young age,” Schwarzer said. “He decided he was going to make a different life for himself.”

The battle to take Augusta back

Five years after the Declaration was signed, the British still controlled Georgia. Their troops were stationed at St. Paul’s Church in Augusta. Augusta patriots devised a plan to retake the city.

A marker along Reynolds Street downtown commemorates the Maham Tower — the key to how they did it.

“They actually build a tower — an earthen tower shored up with wood — haul their cannons onto the top of that tower, fire down into that fort, devastating it,” Schwarzer said. “And after a few days, the British will surrender and Augusta will be back in Patriot hands.”

That surrender came in June 1781 — months before the British formally surrendered at Yorktown.

Augusta’s place in the larger story

More battles were fought in South Carolina than in any other colony. What happened across Georgia and the Carolinas helped determine how the war ended and what the new country would look like.

George Walton is buried beneath the Signers’ Monument in downtown Augusta. Meadow Garden is hosting free America250 events this weekend, open to the public.

“We have a lot of possibilities now,” Schwarzer said. “Take what we have, make the best of it, and keep moving.”