Renaissance faires in New Hampshire

New Hampshire's oldest and largest costumed festival began in 1975, when members of Clan Murray held a picnic at Loon Mountain that grew over five decades into the NH Highland Games & Festival, a weekend drawing as many as 45,000 attendees whose 2025 edition marked its 50th year with more than 30 clans represented in its Clan Village. The Games are run by NHSCOT, a Concord-based nonprofit that recently purchased the former YMCA Camp Spaulding in Concord to build Camp Caledonia, a year-round Scottish cultural center, and whose executive director calls the Games 'one of the biggest in the U.S.' The state's flagship renaissance event, the New Hampshire Renaissance Faire, was founded in 2005 by Shannon McCracken-Barber at a camp in Kingston, drew about 300 people to its rain-soaked first outing, and was purchased in 2011 by a group of volunteers who formed the Three Maples Renaissance Corp, a 501(c)(3) that has since donated over $250,000 to charities such as the New Hampshire Food Bank and Rockingham County Meals on Wheels; the faire shifted from October to a two-weekend May run in 2009, moved to Brookvale Pines Farm in Fremont in 2018, and topped 8,400 patrons as early as 2016. That charitable, volunteer-run character extends to Franklin, where Myla Everett revived the Franklin Renaissance Faire in 2025 with support from the Franklin Falls Rotary Club, fielding more than 30 vendors with plans to donate proceeds around the city — and where the City of Franklin issued a 2024 proclamation fixing Renaissance Faire Weekend to the weekend after Labor Day each year. On the Seacoast, the Vagabond's Faire is a self-described family-owned, friend-run business that stages interactive renaissance faires and themed dinner events. Together these give New Hampshire a season that opens with a spring renaissance faire and peaks in September, with nonprofits, a Rotary club, and family operations — rather than commercial promoters — running the state's scene.

Sources: NHRF History — New Hampshire Renaissance Faire · Concord Monitor — 50th NH Highland Games honors Scottish culture · New Hampshire Magazine — NH Highland Games celebrates 50 years · Laconia Daily Sun — All invited to Franklin Renaissance Faire · The Vagabond's Faire