Renaissance faires in Maryland

Maryland's scene is anchored by the Maryland Renaissance Festival, founded in 1977 near Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia by Jules Smith Sr., a Minnesota lawyer who had invested in the Minnesota Renaissance Festival before organizing one of his own; his son Jules Smith Jr. took over management in 1986 and still runs it with three siblings. In 1985 the festival moved to its permanent home in Crownsville, where a fictional 16th-century English village called Revel Grove spreads over 27 wooded acres with more than 130 craft shops, a jousting tiltyard seating 3,000, and a running storyline that has followed the reign of Henry VIII since 1989. It draws around 300,000 visitors across a nine-weekend season beginning in late August, marked its 50th season in 2026, and is described as one of the largest and longest-running Renaissance fairs in the country. The state's Celtic tradition runs nearly as deep: the Celtic Society of Southern Maryland stages its annual Celtic Festival at Jefferson Patterson Park in St. Leonard, an event its organizers count toward a 49th annual edition. Newer events show the scene's fantasy and maritime range — costume designer Lee Andersen of ManneqArt, a Columbia-based arts and education nonprofit, launched the FantasyWood Festival in 2019 at Merriweather Park together with the Inner Arbor Trust and the Circus Siren Pod mermaid troupe, and it now fills a 400-acre farm at the Living Farm Heritage Museum in West Friendship. On the Eastern Shore, Rock Hall's Pirates and Wenches Weekend began in 2007 after Captain Mark Einstein and his wife Suzanne dreamed it up at a local Halloween costume contest; it grew into a community-wide celebration distinctive to the Chesapeake, where visitors are invited to arrive by land or by sea and a decorated dinghy parade sails from the harbor.

Renaissance faires in Maryland

Cities

16 upcoming faires