Vermont

Here are 10 summer festivals in Vermont to attend this year

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1 year ago

June 5, 2025

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Here are 10 summer festivals in Vermont to attend this year

Pitchfork Music Festival Will Not Return To Chicago In 2025

After 19 years, the Pitchfork Music Festival has announced it will not return to Chicago in 2025.

unbranded – Entertainment

Looking forward to spending time outdoors at a festival or fair this summer?

Luckily, Vermont has plenty of exciting festivals lined up to celebrate the season all summer long, from June through September. From food festivals to outdoor concerts to historical agricultural fairs, the state is sure to have the perfect festival for the whole family to enjoy.

Here are 10 festivals in Vermont to attend this summer.

Vermont State Fair

The Vermont State Fair, Vermont’s oldest agricultural fair, will return this summer for the 179th time. Hosted by the Rutland Agricultural Society, this five-day event will include live entertainment, carnival rides and food trucks, as well as agricultural demonstrations like animal races or tractor shows.

Hours and ticket information for the 2025 Vermont State Fair will follow in the coming weeks.

When: Tuesday, Aug. 12 through Saturday, Aug. 16

Where: 175 S Main St., Rutland

Do Good Fest

Back in Montpelier this July is Do Good Fest, a charity music festival that benefits the Vermont Foodbank. This year, Do Good’s headliner is Grammy award-winning band The Fray, who will be joined by the Plain White T’s and Sammy Rae & The Friends.

Along with the big concert, this festival will also have two dozen food trucks, a beer garden, a donation drive and a fireworks show. General admission to Do Good Fest costs just $5, but all size donations are accepted. Children ages five and under enter for free.

When: Saturday, July 12 from 2-9 p.m.

Where: National Life Group, 1 National Life Dr., Montpelier

Quechee Hot Air Balloon Festival

Head over to the 45th annual Quechee Hot Air Balloon Festival for a dreamy weekend of hot air balloon rides through the scenic Upper Valley sky. As the longest-running hot air balloon festival in New England, this event also features live music, a kids zone and over 50 artisan vendors of local foods and goods.

Tickets, which cost $25 for adults or $5 for children, include admission for the whole weekend, so guests may come and go throughout the three-day festival. Balloon rides are sold separately.

When: Friday, June 20 through Sunday, June 22. Hours are 3-8 p.m. on Friday, 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturday and 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Sunday.

Where: Quechee Green Park, 70 Village Green, Quechee

Vermont Blueberry Festival

Nothing says summer like fresh blueberries, and Southern Vermont’s Deerfield Valley is celebrating the popular fruit with a 10-day festival.

The area-wide festival will feature various blueberry-themed events, including a blueberry parade, a blueberry kids fair, a blueberry craft fair, a blueberry parade, blueberry planting classes, a blueberry dessert competition and a blueberry pie eating contest. Additionally, the festival will be accompanied by lots of live music, farmers markets and special blueberry-infused creations from local restaurants and bars, including blueberry chicken tacos, blueberry pancakes and blueberry lemon martinis.

While most of the events for the blueberry festival are free, some may have individual costs. A full schedule with details can be found online.

When: Friday, July 25 through Sunday, Aug. 3.

Where: Various locations in Deerfield Valley

Champlain Valley Fair

Close out summer at the 103rd Champlain Valley Fair, coming to Essex Junction at the end of August. The iconic fair has plenty of agricultural demonstrations and competitions, cooking competitions, carnival rides and games, a demolition derby and more.

The ten-day fair also features a different entertainment act each night, including Lil Jon, Dustin Lynch and Gabriel Iglesias this year.

Tickets are now available online, with single-day admission starting at $12 for adults and $6 for children. Concerts and rides are sold separately.

When: Friday, Aug. 22 through Sunday, August 31. Gates open at noon on weekdays and 10 a.m. on weekends.

Where: 105 Pearl St., Essex Junction

Vermont Brewers Festival

Established in 1991, the Vermont Brewers Festival is a popular two-day craft beer event located on the picturesque shores of Lake Champlain. While sipping on beer from over 30 craft breweries, guests can shop from local food and goods vendors, enjoy live music and play lawn games like giant beer pong.

Tickets cost $60 in advance or $65 day-of. Each ticket includes 15 tabs to use as drink tickets, with five extra tickets available for purchase inside. Designated driver tickets are also available for $22 on-site only.

When: Friday, July 18 from 5:30-9:30 p.m. and Saturday, July 19 from noon to 4 p.m. or 5:30-9:30 p.m.

Where: Waterfront Park, 10 College St., Burlington

Art in the Park

Each summer, the Chaffee Art Center hosts an Art in the Park Festival showcasing fine art, photography and crafts from local artists. The free festival also includes specialty foods, children’s activities, live music and demonstrations of artworks in progress.

When: Saturday, Aug. 9 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday, Aug. 10 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Where: Main Street Park, 5 S Main St., Rutland

Burlington Wine & Food Festival

Burlington is celebrating summer with the perfect festival for wine lovers – a day of wine tasting and food sampling on the shores of Lake Champlain. The festival will feature wines from all over the world, including Italy, Spain, France and right here in Vermont, as well as artisan cheeses, meats and chocolates.

Admission costs $80 per guest for advance tickets or $95 on the day of the event. The price of the ticket includes all food sampling, wine tasting and on-site presentations.

When: Saturday, June 21 from 12:30-3:30 p.m. or 5-8 p.m.

Where: Hula Lakeside, 50 Lakeside Ave., Burlington

Best of Vermont Summer Festival

Back for a fifth year, the Best of Vermont Summer Festival is a newer festival that celebrates summer with live music, craft beverages, artisan products, specialty foods, antique tractors and kids activities. Ticket and scheduling information for this fair will be published online when made available.

When: Saturday, Aug. 23 and Sunday, Aug. 24 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Where: Okemo Field at Route 103 and Bixby Road, Ludlow

Burlington Discover Jazz Festival

In early June, jazz music will fill the streets of downtown Burlington for the 42nd Burlington Discover Jazz Festival. Musical acts will range in everything from local high school bands to a closing night tribute to Alice Coltrane, one of the most influential women in jazz.

Ticket prices vary depending on the specific show. All tickets can be bought online.

When: Wednesday, June 4 through Sunday, June 8

Where: Various locations in downtown Burlington

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Vermont

Norman Rockwell finally gets his day in new Shelburne Museum exhibit

Published

9 hours ago

June 19, 2026

Press Room

Norman Rockwell finally gets his day in new Shelburne Museum exhibit

SHELBURNE — Norman Rockwell lived for a time in suburban New York City and died and was buried in the Berkshires of Massachusetts. But for 14 years in between, the artist spent perhaps the most prolific period of his career in Vermont creating his best-known works.

That’s how Shelburne Museum curator Carolyn Bauer sees it — and how the museum’s latest exhibition treats the artist.

“Norman Rockwell: At Home in Vermont,” which opens June 20 and runs through Oct. 25, displays 40 of the 175 covers Rockwell famously created for The Saturday Evening Post magazine during his time in Vermont between 1939 and 1953.

Also on display are prints of “The Four Freedoms,” maybe his most famed works of all, which represent American ideals spelled out by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941. Paintings in the exhibition include “The Young Lady with the Shiner” and “The Tattoo Artist,” both whimsical, recognizable pieces used as covers for The Saturday Evening Post.

“It’s very accessible work and approachable,” Bauer said.

The display features the three paintings that inspired the exhibition, given to the Shelburne Museum by Rock of Ages, the Barre granite quarry and monument maker. Those Rockwell paintings filled a significant gap in the museum’s art collection, which includes works by Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Grandma Moses and Andrew Wyeth but, until recently, none by Rockwell, perhaps the best-known artist to have lived here.

“It feels like a homecoming in many regards,” Bauer said.

Moving to southern VT, finding ‘the every American’

The exhibition frames Rockwell’s time in Vermont around the tenor of the times in America. As the Great Depression was ending, World War II was looming and the nation was growing more urban and industrialized, much of the public was yearning for greater simplicity, Bauer said.

Rockwell was among them, leaving New Rochelle north of New York City for the quietude of Arlington in southern Vermont.

He was not alone. Contemporary artists including Mead Schaeffer, John Atherton and Gene Pelham would settle in Arlington too, creating what Bauer termed “the golden illustrator days” in Vermont.

Rockwell’s art, as the 152-page hardcover catalogue accompanying the exhibition notes, shows “how Vermont itself came to embody American ideals in the national imagination.”

Rockwell and his fellow Arlington artists used each other as models in their creations. “They really would work collaboratively,” Bauer said.

Pelham’s daughter, Melinda, is shown in the exhibition in two works: “The Babysitter,” a painting of a girl holding a crying baby that’s on loan from The Fleming Museum at the University of Vermont and an admission submission Rockwell sent to Kellogg’s of a girl clutching a cereal-laden spoon to her mouth.

Doctors, mail deliverers and shopkeepers from Arlington populated his work. Bauer said Rockwell usually gave models $5 and a can of Coca-Cola.

“He was recycling and using just about everybody in town,” Bauer said. That included himself: Rockwell added his own visage to the multiple faces in “The Gossip,” which shows him lashing out at a woman who’s started the rumor-mongering.

Bauer said Rockwell wanted to cultivate a sense of place by using Vermonters known for their austere self-reliance at the forefront of his work. He also found “the every American” ideal in town, Bauer said, though his art reflected a pronounced lack of diversity.

In later work, Rockwell would confront race and segregation as the Civil Rights Movement swept the U.S.

“He was progressive,” Bauer said.

Inspired by paintings donated by Rock of Ages

“Norman Rockwell: At Home in Vermont” was inspired by the 2025 museum acquisition of a trio of Rockwell works that once hung in the Barre offices of Rock of Ages. The granite company contacted the museum asking if it could donate the paintings, Bauer said, prompting staffers to wonder momentarily, “Is this real?”

Rockwell created advertisements for Rock of Ages and gave the paintings upon which the ads were based to the company. “Kneeling Girl” from 1955, making its debut at the Shelburne Museum, takes place in front of a gravestone engraved with the name Newton.

Rock of Ages donated two versions of 1963 work “The Craftsman,” a muted draft and a more luminous final version that were first displayed at the museum last year. They depict Rock of Ages stonecutter George Seivwright working in the shadow of a memorial bearing the name “Norwell,” a portmanteau of Rockwell’s first and last names.

Bauer called the paintings “incredible works of art that were circulated widely” in ads, brochures and pamphlets touting Rock of Ages and its world-famous Vermont granite. Though Rockwell had left Vermont for Massachusetts by the time he created those paintings, they do what Rockwell had done when he lived in Arlington — show the nation and the world what Vermont and Vermonters are capable of.

“We are just eager for our visitors to see these paintings,” Bauer said.

If you go

WHAT: “Norman Rockwell: At Home in Vermont”

WHEN: June 20 through Oct. 25

WHERE: Pizzagalli Center for Art and Education, Shelburne Museum

INFORMATION: $8-$25 museum admission; free under age 5 and for active military and Shelburne Museum members. shelburnemuseum.org

Contact Brent Hallenbeck at bhallenbeck@burlingtonfreepress.com.

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Vermont

Possible tornado causes damage in small Vermont town during Thursday’s intense storms – The Boston Globe

Published

19 hours ago

June 18, 2026

Press Room

Possible tornado causes damage in small Vermont town during Thursday’s intense storms – The Boston Globe

The National Weather Service is investigating whether a small tornado touched down in Woodstock in eastern Vermont on Thursday afternoon as intense storms swept through the area, uprooting and snapping trees, and causing structural damage.

A damage survey team is expected to assess the damage on Friday morning to confirm whether any tornadoes touched down during the severe thunderstorms, the Weather Service in Burlington, Vt., said.

The suspected tornado occurred some time between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m., according to the NWS. A tight vortex, a marker for rotation, was spotted on radar, although there was no debris signature detected on radar. No tornado warnings were issued at the time.

If a tornado is confirmed to have touched down, the survey team will also determine the size, path, and intensity of the twister.

Some of the damage left behind by what is believed to have been a tornado that touched down Thursday.Chris Markos

The last tornado to touch down in Vermont was just a couple of months ago. On April 16, 2026, an EF1 touched down in Williamstown, Vt., according to the NWS. An EF1 tornado is the second-lowest rating for twisters, according to the Enhanced Fujita Scale, which ranks them based on intensity.

Several supercells had tracked across northern New York into southern and central Vermont, producing large hail and damaging winds, and eventually spawning the tornado, which the Weather Service said was about a half-mile long and 200 yards wide at its peak. The damage survey team also found ”extensive wind damage between Ainsworth State Park and Jackson Center with estimated winds between 70 and 80 mph,“ which was caused by an accompanying microburst, the NWS said.

Large trees are seen uprooted near Staples Pond in Williamstown, Vt., in April.NWS

More than an hour after the Vermont storm, two tornado warnings were issued for southern Worcester County after a pair of tight vortexes were spotted on radar, indicating a possible tornado.

No structural or other damages were found, but storm spotters have submitted reports of a funnel cloud near the Spencer-Leicester town line.

Ken Mahan can be reached at ken.mahan@globe.com. Follow him on Instagram @kenmahantheweatherman. Marianne Mizera can be reached at marianne.mizera@globe.com. Follow her @MareMizera.

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Vermont

Vermont law enforcement officers petition for highway dedication in honor of David Chris Maland

Published

1 day ago

June 18, 2026

Press Room

Vermont law enforcement officers petition for highway dedication in honor of David Chris Maland

It’s been nearly a year and a half since border agent David ‘Chris’ Maland was shot and killed during a traffic stop near the interstate in Coventry, Vermont. Now, a group of law enforcement officers are petitioning to dedicate a section of I-91 to him.

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