For most of the forty-plus years the Village has thrown Fall Fest, the festival worked as an annual exception. Central Avenue filled up for three days, the rides went up across the river, and then the street went quiet again until the Christmas Parade. That is the version of Fall Fest a lot of us grew up with.
This September the exception has a competitor: the street itself. The parade route now passes a record shop, a brewery pub, a fine dining room, a speakeasy bar under a historic house, and a vendor mall in the works. The festival is no longer the only reason to be downtown that week. It is the busiest weekend on a corridor that already has traffic, and that changes how you plan the three days.
The Three Days, And What Is Actually Confirmed
The Village of Barboursville has posted the bones of the 2026 schedule on its Fall Fest page: the festival runs September 17 through 19, the parade is Thursday the 17th, the Fall Fest Arts and Crafts Show runs Friday and Saturday, and concession spaces are available all three days. Organizers announced back in the spring that Montgomery Gentry featuring Eddie Montgomery headlines on Saturday the 19th, which WCHS reported alongside the usual festival roster of parade, car show, entertainment, food and vendors.
What the Village has not published is a full hour-by-hour schedule. If you are trying to time a Friday evening around the arts and crafts booths or catch a specific act, the Fall Fest Facebook page is where the times land, not the municipal site.
| Day | Confirmed for 2026 | What the day has looked like recently |
|---|---|---|
| Thursday, Sept. 17 | Parade; concessions open | Carnival already running by parade night; parade goes rain or shine |
| Friday, Sept. 18 | Arts and Crafts Show; concessions | Vendors set up downtown, live music in the evening |
| Saturday, Sept. 19 | Arts and Crafts Show; Montgomery Gentry featuring Eddie Montgomery | Car show, pancake breakfast, petting zoo, professional wrestling |
The right-hand column is precedent, not promise. The car show, pancake breakfast and petting zoo lineup comes from how recent festivals have run, and Saturday's schedule has shifted before.
The midway is Gambill Amusements again, and the wristband math is the one piece of Fall Fest planning worth handling before the week starts. An unlimited-ride wristband good for any one day is sold in advance at a discount off the $25 gate value, and it is not recommended for anyone under 36 inches tall.
Two official pages list two different presale cutoffs. Gambill's event listing says the discount ends at 6 p.m. on September 17, while the ticketing page selling the wristbands says 6 p.m. on September 16. Buy early rather than betting on the later date, and confirm on the Fall Fest Facebook page.
The Parade Still Ends At Sadler Field
For the last several years the parade has lined up at the Barboursville Middle School bus garage off College Avenue, stepped off from the school, and finished in front of Sadler Field along Farmdale Road, with high school bands peeling off before the Farmdale Bridge to load buses and equipment. Organizers have pointed spectators who want to watch the musical performances toward parking along Central Avenue or Main Street.
Two practical notes if that route holds. First, the temporary fairground has historically gone up across the Guyandotte River on the old Sadler field, before the bridge into town, which means the parade and the rides pull traffic to the same crossing at the same hour. Second, parade night is rain or shine. That has been the standing rule, and it is worth telling anyone in your group who plans to decide at 5 p.m. based on the radar.
If you live along the route, Thursday evening is a driveway night. If you live off it, the walk in from Main Street has gotten more interesting than it used to be, which brings us to the actual change this year.
The Street The Parade Runs Down Is Not The Same Street
Jason Beter's cluster of businesses is the clearest measure of how fast this happened. He started with Oscar's Breakfast, Burgers and Brews and 1861 Public House, added Orbit's Record Shop, then opened Köerber Beer Company on Brady Street in the summer of 2024, an idea he has said was born out of Oscar's and 1861. Then came Copper and Rye in the old Bruno's building, and this past spring, Black Fox Social.
Here is the walkable roster, with addresses, because half of these did not exist the last time you circled the block looking for a parade parking spot:
- 1861 Public House, 650 Central Ave. The name refers to the Battle of Barboursville.
- Copper and Rye, 646 Central Ave. Upscale modern American with Southern flair and French technique, with Jared Lewis running the kitchen.
- Orbit's Record Shop, 601 Central Ave. Open Tuesday through Saturday 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Sunday noon to 6 p.m., closed Monday. Note that Monday closure if you were counting on browsing after the festival breaks down.
- Köerber Beer Company, 650 Brady St. The brewery is expanding production, and the new taproom is set to add morning coffee shop hours.
- Black Fox Social, 703 Main St. A basement cocktail lounge beneath the historic Thornburg House, with a patio and big screens.
- Olde Library Tavern, 728 Main St. Full bar and a full menu in a building most of us knew by a different use.
Still to come is Bazaar on Central, a curated vendor mall Beter has planned for the heart of downtown. The Village's own downtown business page describes major renovations underway in one of the cornerstone Central Avenue properties, which is the polite municipal way of saying the corridor is not finished filling in.
If you only get one free evening
Take Friday. Saturday belongs to the headliner and the crowd that comes with it, and Thursday belongs to the parade. Friday is the night you can do the arts and crafts show and then actually get a table, because the same three-block stretch that hosts the booths now has four or five rooms to sit down in. That was not true five years ago, and it is the single biggest change in how this week works.
The Wednesday Opening At Tanyard Station
The day before the parade, Chicken Salad Chick opens its first West Virginia restaurant at 21 Tanyard Station Drive. The grand opening is Wednesday, September 16, the first 100 guests in line win free chicken salad for a year, and the store runs daily from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tammy and Rancie Hannah are the owners and first-time franchisees, and the pre-opening Friends and Family events are raising money for Ronald McDonald House. The opening takes the brand into its 26th state, and it lands in the former Guadalajara space.
Mayor Chris Tatum announced the chain was coming back in January, and WSAZ confirmed the Tanyard Station site in June. Put the calendar side by side and the sequence is hard to miss: a first-in-the-state opening on Wednesday, a parade on Thursday, an arts and crafts show Friday and Saturday, and a country headliner Saturday night. That is a lot of foot traffic for one village in one week.
Tanyard Station itself is the 50-acre former CSX railyard along the Mud River off Exit 18 at Merritts Creek, built out past 200,000 square feet with Menards, Aldi, Sheetz and LongHorn as anchors, from the same developer behind Merritt Creek Farm. Two other 2026 additions round out the picture. Austin's Homemade Ice Cream announced in March that it was taking the former Fuel space in River Place Plaza on Route 60 East for its third location, with the ice cream still made in Ceredo. And Buffalo Wild Wings reopened at the Huntington Mall in March under Schmidt Family Restaurant Group after a full gut renovation, with 110 people hired for the relaunch.
What The Calendar Does After The Rides Leave
Fall Fest is a September event, but it is not the last one. Barboursville Park, at 750 acres the second largest municipal park in West Virginia, carries most of what follows, with an amphitheater, walking trails, a fishing lake and ponds, ball fields, a horse show ring and an archery range. The Village of Lights drive-through display is set to pick up immediately after the Christmas Parade on December 5 and runs Thursday through Sunday for the rest of December, beginning at the main park entrance and ending at the Barboursville Soccer Complex.
Between now and then, the Village's annual slate also includes Outdoor Movie Nights and the Tractor Show, with Civil War Days and the Fourth of July on the other side of the year. Read the calendar top to bottom and you get a village that programs its own public life, month after month, rather than relying on one September weekend to do the work.
Why Any Of This Matters Past Saturday
Here is the part that outlasts the wristbands. A downtown corridor that supports a brewery, a record shop, a fine dining room and a cocktail lounge within a few hundred feet of each other is a corridor that stayed busy on ordinary Tuesdays long enough for those owners to commit. Local business coverage this spring put it plainly: people from around Huntington now drive to Barboursville for food and drink instead of the other way around. Fall Fest did not create that. It just makes it visible for three days.
So walk it this year. Park on Main, watch the parade finish toward Sadler Field, and then take the long way back up Central and notice which storefronts have lights on that were dark the last time you paid attention. That is the most honest read of a place you will get all year, and it costs you nothing but an evening.
If you have been wondering what all of that means for a house on this side of the Mud River, or you have friends asking you about the village because they saw the festival photos, I am always glad to talk it through. Jan Ramey has spent 40-plus years in this area and works with buyers and sellers across Cabell, Putnam and Kanawha counties. Let's Connect.
