Renaissance faires in Missouri

Missouri's highest-profile renaissance event is the St. Louis Renaissance Festival, which has been running since 1999 at Rotary Park in Wentzville, where the park is transformed into the 16th-century French village of Petit Lyon over fall weekends. In mid-Missouri, the Central Missouri Renaissance Festival — whose president is Stephen Eickhorst — gained a permanent home in 2019 when the organization purchased about 20 acres of farmland just off the Hatton exit of Interstate 70 near Kingdom City, and it directs a portion of ticket proceeds to a food drive for the Fulton Soup Kitchen, offering discounted admission to visitors who bring a nonperishable food item. The Ozarks side of the scene is anchored by the White Hart Renaissance Faire near Hartville, founded by Charles and Di Taylor as a home for performers free from the corporate influence of the country's major faires and sustained by volunteer cast and crew alongside its performers and vendors. White Hart's grounds also stage themed events beyond the main faire, including a Viking spring faire, a Christmas celebration, and the Feast of the Goblin King, which it bills as a Halloween–renaissance faire fusion. In the state's northwest, the Bluffwoods Renaissance Festival in St. Joseph is held at the Castle Bridge Event Center, a venue with a dedicated jousting arena, an air-conditioned indoor tavern and food hall, a settlement area for its SCA and Viking guilds, and a marketplace of more than 60 artisan vendors, with a stated mission of keeping the festival affordable and family-friendly for the local community. Together these events give Missouri a scene that ranges from a long-running fall festival in the St. Louis metro to independent, volunteer-driven faires on their own grounds in the Ozarks and mid-Missouri farmland.

Renaissance faires in Missouri

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12 upcoming faires