Edmonton Heritage Festival 2026

Table of Contents

ට  Introduction
ට  Gallery of Country Tents
ට  Misc Event Pictures
ට  Food Pictures
ට  Other Swag

My previous chronicled visits to the Edmonton Heritage Festival:

ට  2019
ට  2021
ට  2025

Introduction

After a three-year absence from William Hawrelak Park due to rehabilitation, during which the festival was temporarily staged at Borden Park, the Heritage Festival moved back to Hawrelak Park this year! And boy was it a little bit of a disaster, thanks to the weather. The first day shut down early due to rain (local) and the second due to strong winds (local) apparently blowing some of the tents over, ha. I wasn't there for either day, though I had planned to go down on the second day, but found out that they had shut down for the day just before I left.

The weather on the third day was nice and cool though, so I decided to go down anyway since it was the first year that it was back at Hawrelak. It turned out that the entire park was really muddy -- especially the middle and northern quadrants of the park. My shoes were filthy afterwards and needed a good scrubbing the next day to restore some semblance of presentability again. Despite the muddy park, and despite (or perhaps due to) the first two weekend days having ended early and Monday not being a statutory holiday, the venue was very, very packed with people, especially from around noon and onwards. They also extended the hours of the festival on the third day to end at 9:00 pm to match the other two days, to make up for the shortened Day 1 and 2, though I bet from past experience that many of the vendors closed up around or before 8:00 pm anyway. There were shuttle buses (local) to the event, and I took one to/from South Campus station.

The website for the 2026 version of the event is here (local) with a similar subpage here (local). The website aesthetics look like they paid us a visit from the late 1990s, and are obviously slapped together with little effort in places -- look at the font on the Tips and Advice page (local) for example. The festival map is located here (local) and the very, very poorly created menu is here (local) -- the first page is just called "Tab 1" and the entire text of the document is duplicated twice. The email address on the Code of Conduct .pdf file (local) is messed up too. There's also a Cultural Exhibit and Performances .pdf file (local) that was in the drop-down menu but wasn't linked on the actual event page itself, and a list of sponsors here (local).

I also scanned the event booklet and have stuffed it into the gallery below. The last page got a little bit torn, but I didn't take a fresh copy to scan because they were short on booklets even though the event finished early on each of the first two days -- the information tents and the lost and found tents all had just one copy of the booklet left by the end of the evening and were only allowing people to take pictures of the map and pointing them to the stupid QR codes on the wall (I have a thing against unreadable, unsaveable QR codes).

Gallery of Country Tents

This year, I strived to try to get at least four pictures of every country tent, since my WordPress gallery block supports having four images per row. Several countries just had one food tent though, and it was not really possible to get four different, meaningful photos of those ones, so sometimes I just did different angles of the same things.

Countries are arranged in alphabetical order. Although they also had a number assigned to each one for purposes of organization, the tents were not always actually where the maps said they would be -- for example, the Hong Kong tent, 44 on the map, was actually physically located between the Indonesia and Ethiopia tents, 8 and 14 on the map. (Note: I'm realizing now that this was actually reflected on the ONLINE map but not the PHYSICAL one.) In fact, here's the two side by side.

Physical:

Online:

The online one was accurate (or more accurate). I don't blame the organizers for this mismatch, they probably had to move some around due to mud, or last minute tent size changes or something, it seems fairly common across all types of events.

New tents this year (as compared to the 2025 edition of the festival) include:

Senegal
Somalia
Somaliland & Republic of Congo (joint tent)
South Korea
Zimbabwe

And the tents that were in the 2025 edition but are NOT in the 2026 map include:

Congo
Cote d'Ivorie
Kenya
Korea
Liberia
Netherlands
Newcomers (Somalia/Senegal)
Portugal
Spain

A few notes: Korea obviously just got renamed to South Korea, and the two countries that shared the 2025 Newcomers tent, Somalia and Senegal, both had their own separate tents this time. Somaliland is not Somalia, and Republic of Congo is not the Congo that was there last year (the 2025 one was the Democratic Republic one with Kinshasa as the capital, this year's one is the Republic one with Brazzaville as the capital), but that joint tent was possibly the equivalent of the "Newcomers" tent from the year before, and from prior years (from my own logs, 2021's was Eritrea/Nigeria, but they both have their own tents these years as well.)

In addition, the PHYSICAL copy of the map (the first one above) actually listed an Afghanistan tent at #29 and a Spain tent at #24, but both were left out of the ONLINE copy of the map (the second one above)! I guess they pulled out at the last minute? I remember looking for the Afghanistan tent but not finding it at all and wondering if I had missed it somewhere.

But anyway, of the attendees, here are countries in alphabetical order (with numerical tent number in brackets)!

Australia (62)

Azerbaijan (53)

Bangladesh (63)

Barbados (3)

Bosnia and Herzegovina (60)

Cameroon (7)

China (36)

China was one of the tents that I spent the longest time around, partly because they had a huge performance stage in front of the tent, and partly because I commissioned another Tigey watercolour portrait from one of the Chinese Graduates Association of Alberta volunteers. That took about two hours to do, and after paying for it I wandered out to view the other tents in this quadrant of the park, and then came back and hung around to watch over Tigey from a distance because I was very nervous about leaving Tigey out in public, even in someone else's care. It would have been so easy for him to just "disappear" forever.

There was also a free tea sample booth here that was offering people small cups of white and black tea. They were really nice, particularly the black tea, which was a lapsang souchong flavour. I've never (knowingly) tried it before but I'm going to look out for it now.

Colombia (55)

Croatia (5)

Cuba (21)

Ecuador (39)

El Salvador (17)

El Salvador had one of the central stages of the festival -- it was by itself right in front of the area where most people that arrived by bus first stepped into the festival at, and left from.

Eritrea (10)

Ethiopia (14)

Fiji (27)

Just like last year, way too many countries had "henna art" as part of their (and sometimes, like Fiji, their only) display of heritage and culture. I believe several of them even used the exact same advertisement for it. Boring. Uncreative.

France (47)

Germany (45)

Ghana (23)

Hong Kong (44)

Hungary (48)

India (54)

Indigenous (59)

Indonesia (8)

Iran (28)

Ireland (50)

Israel (56)

Israel had the worst tent at the pavilion -- and by that, I mean it had the misfortune to be right located right on top of a huge mud pile or something, thanks to the weather. Most of the tents in the central region of the festival were in a very muddy field, but Israel's location was bad even compared to them. The entire large cultural tent, and the area in front of the central stage, was so muddy that the lady in front of me gave up and just took off her slippers to walk barefoot through the mud. They had a barker in front of the entrance encouraging people to come in anyway despite the muddy conditions.

Italy (52)

Jamaica (2)

Japan (42)

I was really excited to see that Edmonton now has a karuta club! That's the card game that the Chihayafuru anime promotes, which I've done a massive number of writeups on. And went to visit the host shrine for the card game, Omi Jingu, twice, once by myself and once with Zian. Apparently the club just started up in March of this year.

Kurdistan (33)

Lebanon (43)

Lebanon had a great performance. They had a troupe called the Arabian Knights who put on a play on their stage, with a narrator weaving a tale about a corrupt king and a prince who tried to safeguard a village from his father's tyranny while the people on stage acted out the scenes. They wove in song and dance and swordfights and even an interlude with a violinist, Sylia Merhi. Compared to other countries, it was unique and clever, and I so thoroughly enjoyed it that I stayed for virtually the entire performance.

Malaysia & Singapore (26)

My home country! Their tent was really bad though, with just a food stall and that's it. How embarrassing. I did pick up a couple of cool, free postcards that I will share below in the swag section, though.

Mauritius (22)

It was definitely hard to take four decently different photos for some of the countries that didn't really put any effort into their cultural showcase and just had one food tent.

Mexico (34)

Mongolia (18)

Morocco (12)

Myanmar (61)

Nepal (51)

Nicaragua (35)

Nigeria (41)

I never managed to see any of their performances, but the couple of times I passed by the stage I saw a bunch of kids dancing on it, which I thought reflected well on the tent and country. A carefree and happy vibe!

Oromia (40)

Pakistan (11)

Palestine (1)

Peru (30)

Philippines (38)

After I got Tigey's picture drawn at the China tent, I brought him over to the Philippines tent where there was a caricature artist working too. I got him to draw Tigey and told him about my collection. Also, I really like the last picture in this gallery here. Philippines was doing a fashion display show when I reached their tent, and that particular shot in particular became one of my favourites because I took it from the back side of the stage, which framed the model against the vast expanse of fluffy clouds behind her. Doesn't it kind of look like she's spreading her wings, about to fly off?

Poland (49)

Romania (58)

Scandinavia (15)

Senegal (20)

Serbia (31)

My favourite festival staple dish that I come back for every year (albeit a small sample size) -- svadbarski kupus from the Serbia store, served by an attendant wearing their "STRONG, Smart, Good Looking... Must be SERBIAN." aprons. They've worn those for many years, since I've noted them as far back as my 2019 visit, and I love them.

Somaliland & Republic of Congo (37)

This one is the equivalent of the Newcomers tent that was Somalia + Senegal last year.

Somalia (65)

South Korea (32)

Sudan (13)

Taiwan (9)

I didn't catch any formal performances by them, but like Nigeria above, I did appreciate a whole bunch of people, multi-racial in this case, just chilling up on the Taiwanese stage and dancing to the beat of their own tune!

Thailand (16)

Togo (19)

Türkiye (4)

Uganda (57)

Ukraine (46)

Uyghur (6)

Pink dog! Dogs, except for service animals, weren't allowed at this event, but this cute one got in anyway, and undoubtably got really muddied socks for it.

Vietnam (64)

Together with the Lebanon play, this was my joint favourite performance that I saw at the festival. The dance here was just so beautiful and colourful, what with the vibrant umbrellas and fans. They were performing their dance in tune to a song called căn gác mùa hè (sweet summer), which had pretty strong Japanese city pop vibes for me.

Zimbabwe (25)

Misc Event Pictures

First up, here's a physical poster of the map on a board at the event. This one is goofy, so goofy that I'm going to give it a full-width image:

This map is actually different from, and a mix of, the physical version and online version! It still contains Spain as a vendor, but has removed Afghanistan from the list (and retained the extra typoed space before the word Australia). This shows the probably order that the maps were printed -- the physical booklet, which still not only lists Afghanistan and Spain as attendees but even lists their food pavilion menus, were printed first, followed by this poster map which removed Afghanistan but left Spain on, and then finally the online one, which was amended after that to remove Spain. It also shows the order that the two countries pulled out of the event.

Next, here are some sponsor and miscellaneous tents from the event. Firstly, the Edmonton Food Bank, for which this is one of their biggest fundraising donation events of the season.

The EPCOR tent and a "Glass of the Sask" water filling station, referring to the North Sasketchewan River that bisects EDmonton, next to the Information booth by the northern entrance.

Rogers:

TD Bank's TD Discovery Bar, whatever this was... some sort of music sampling booth:

My Radio 580AM:

A Jesus Loves You/World Cup Evangelism tent that somehow got in despite not being a sponsor (as far as I could tell):

A big Robertson School of New Work tent that was there for people to relax in the shade:

A Co-Op Taxi Line tent for people who drank too much Lemon, Lime & Bitters and needed to get home safely:

There was a first aid tent staffed by Alberta Paramedical Services, and I later saw them cycling around too:

And another one staffed by St. Johns Ambulance:

And an MNH Injury Lawyers tent for after one recovers from the injuries:

There was a recruitment tent for the Edmonton Police Service, as well as some policemen enjoying the festival sights:

A Lost and Found tent for misplaced items:

And one for misplaced kids, the Lost Child Centre, which was paired up with something called Kidz World to amuse said lost children.

There was at least one Cold Drinks tent that didn't seem tied to any particular country (there were quite a few that were tied to specific countries, especially around the middle European area):

And lots of porta-potty toilets set up around the park:

And lastly, this Wheelchair & Stroller Rental place set up inside a covered picnic site.

There were structures that were part of the park too, like this Kayak & Watercraft Rentals shop. Some people did take them up on it and paddle/cycle out onto the lake.

And a restaurant called Lift Me Up on the Lake, by Tiramisu Bistro (local). It seemed to me like the seating inside the building was partially public, partially guest-only, which was nice.

There was a fairly big playground for kids:

And a few weird sculptures to take pictures next to:

There were three types of garbage disposal areas at the festival. One was managed by the organizers, and kept fairly clean overall:

Anothert kind of built up around certain tents and the bins there, and I guess that country's volunteers took care of those.

Then there were the actual William Hawrelak Park bins, which were just overflowing with garbage and left untouched by the organizers. It was like they overlooked the fact that people would just use the park bins too. This was poor management on their part. Who picked up the tab for all these in the end?

Here are some general bus pictures, both from the South Campus/Fort Edmonton Transit Centre where I took the bus to Hawrelak Park from, and from William Hawrelak Park itself, where there was a long line to queue for the bus on the return trip:

Here's a few ducks I saw in the park:

A flooded picnic table:

And finally, some general crowd pictures that fit nowhere else. There's a few other pictures of insane lines in here too!

Food Pictures

Since I skipped breakfast and lunch, and only had a light dinner otherwise, I ate six things while at the festival. Four of them were early on in the festival while I was on the northern section of tents, one was in the middle section, and one was late in the afternoon on the southern section. The crowds really picked up late in the morning and through lunch and the early afternoon, which was also when I was in the middle section, so it was near impossible to queue for any food there -- many queues were very, very long and looked like they would take upwards for an hour.

Here was the line for Romania's famous elephant ears, for example. This is me standing around the middle of the line and looking left, at the stall:

And then right, toward the end of the line:

Yep, that's the same line. That line went up the hill. Most lines weren't quite that long, but they were long. Serbia for sure had a long that went across the entire venue too, but I found a separate side line to order my cabbage soup at while I was there, thankfully.

Okay, food pics. The first thing I ate was Batata, from the Palestinian pavilion. This was suggested by Trin last year but they were sold out or something so I didn't get a chance. I did, this year. This was very yummy, but it cost $8.00 for a small cup, which was grossly overpriced. Most of the food at the festival was overpriced, though. And what a silly description. Basically "our batata with garlic is batata, infused with garlic!". Say SWEET POTATO!

Description: Experience the deliciousness of our batata with garlic featuring perfectly tender batata, skillfully infused with the savory essence of garlic.

I didn't take any suggestions from friends this year though, since I already did that for Taste of Edmonton and the food prices were high. Next up, I had Fish Cakes from the Barbados pavilion, because I noticed that that item wasn't actually listed in the physical booklet menu that I had. They cost $7, and were nothing like the Chinese-style fishcakes that I know. Heck, they were more fishballs than fishcakes.

Description: none

To wash that down, I had Um Jingur/Millet Pudding, from the Sudan pavilion. This came in a cup, with a soggy paper straw, and cost a whopping $6 for what was basically a cup of yogurt. But eh, at least it was interesting.

Description: A popular Sudanese dish, hearty and nutritious, known for being rich and beneficial for the body. It is primarily based on millet, rob (yogurt/milk), and sugar. A blend of spices such as ginger, cardamon, cinnamon, and galangal root is added to give it a distinctive flavor and high nutritional value.

Next, I had Alcha/Mixed Veggies, from the Eritrea pavilion. This one cost $8, and could have used a little more helping and a little less sour bread. However, I do remember liking the sour honeycomb-patterned bread underneath the topping from previous festivals and I did like it this time around too.

Description: Cabbage, carrots, onion, green/yellow/red papers (sic), oil, turmeric, garlic, parsley, white pepper.

It was almost three hours later, just around 3:25 pm, when I had my next dish, the Svarbarski Kupus/Traditional Cabbage from the Serbia pavilion. Small dish, but I like it very much. This cost $7 for a small cup. It came with a hard loaf of bread too, but like past years, I rejected it.

Description: Slow cooked cabbage with pork and beef and bun.

Two and a half hours after that, at 6:00 pm, I had my final meal at the festival, Mohinga/Burmese Fish Noodle Soup from the Myanmar pavilion for a whopping $15. This meal came with a little story -- I sat down at a shared table to have this, and a couple to my right looked at me. The woman asked if I had just bought the Mohinga by itself or if I had bought anything else with it. I said that it was a standalone order. She immediately got up and went to the Myanmar food table, and came back with a couple of the fish crackers (on the left side of my bowl below) for herself and her husband. She explained to me that she had ordered the same thing but had not received a fish cracker in hers, so she went to inquire about it. I'm pretty sure they only had one Mohinga bowl but she came back with two crackers though!

Description: Savoury, aromatic fish-based broth, balanced by the soft texture of rice noodles.

In the meantime, I chatted with the guy half of the couple and he asked where I was from, then talked about his own ancestry -- both him and his wife had grandparents that came over to Canada from Ireland (and a couple other countries I forget) in the late 1890s to early 1900s. So they've been here a long while. They were a pleasant couple and we chatted a bit until I finished my meal and left. Also, the Mohinga did not come with cilantro or red pepper, I added those to the bowl from the condiments on the table.

Other Swag

As mentioned further up, I had two artists draw pictures of Tigey today, leading to the 15th and 16th portraits of Tigey in my collection. The first one was from the China tent, and when I went there, the lady who was supervising the watercolour artists representing the Chinese Graduates Association of Alberta recognized me from last year, when we met not only at the Heritage Festival, but also at AsiaFest later on in the year. The artist last year, the young girl named Leya, was there again this year, and nodded when the supervisor lady, whose name I believe was Hui Yang/Huiyang, asked Leya if she remembered me.

Originally, Huiyang pegged Leya's elder sister, Lexi (I believe), to do the watercolour of Tigey this year, but apparently things changed due to queued commissions or something, and after a two-hour wait, I was given a picture drawn by another girl named Fiona, who was seated next to Lexi at the artist table. So this is the second watercolour portrait I have of Tigey, drawn by Fiona of the Chinese Graduates Association of Alberta! It cost $25.

I really appreciated that she tried to draw the bag too! There is actually a bit of a smudge on the bottom left, and although they didn't tell me about it, I'm pretty sure I know what happened. I mentioned back up in the China pavilion description that I came back after an hour and a half or so and hovered around nearby until it was done. While I was doing that, I noticed an incident where the table that Tigey was on got hit by a gust of wind, and I think something spilled over some of the papers, as Huiyang then spent some time seated at the table, dabbing at some of the papers with a tissue or cloth or something to try to dry them, as the girls cleaned up and then vacated to other tables. I'm pretty sure that's where the brown smudge came from.

And my opinion of that? That's awesome! I don't need perfect portraits, I never do, and little incidents and stories like that add to the provenance and legend of the item. A story I can tell later. Plus Tigey has a fair few number of smudges himself, eh.

The second portrait was from the Philippines tent, from a caricature artist there. His artist name was Janvictorio (local), and I know from his Facebook that his last name is Victorio, so I assume his first name is Jan. As mentioned, I showed him my collection of Tigey portraits, and while looking through my collection, he pointed at my Laurel Hawkswell one and said he knew of her. He was not the first Tigey artist to say that, Flavio Rojas back at K-Days 2025 had said that to me too, but Jan went one step further and told me that Laurel was actually the one that had inspired him to start up painting caricatures as a job. Wow. What an inspiration she has been to multiple other Edmontonian artists. I must go find her and talk to her again.

He asked me how to spell Tigey's name and added that to the drawing, as well as adding a few tents on the top to signify the Heritage Festival. The entire portrait took about ten minutes or so and cost $20, and I also like it very much!

I also grabbed a business card from him:

The EPCOR tent was giving away free water bottles at the northern gate of the event, meant to be filled up at the free water station nearby. I did claim one as I was coming in, and filled my bottle. The water wasn't super tasty but wasn't terrible either and was very much appreciated. The cap was a little difficult to close as the angle for screwing the cap on wasn't quite perfect, but really it's not a big deal for a bottle that was free and was watertight when closed shut. The bottles were given out from this big jar thing in front of the EPCOR tent.

I picked up two weirdly-shaped Malaysian postcards from the Malaysia/Singapore pavilion. They've been scanned and displayed below. The backs were identical so I only uploaded one of them.

The karuta club in the Japan pavilion had a nice brochure, so I took one of those as well. As mentioned, I'm so very happy that Edmonton has a karuta club now.

They also had a few other brochures on offer, and I grabbed some:

I bought a $2 fortune slip from the China tent, something that I did last year as well. It's one where I shake a box of sticks until one falls out, and they give me the top slip from the envelope that matches the number on the stick. This year, it was the #2 stick, and my fortune read:

Fortune #2: Devine protected sign. Your words and deeds make no mistakes; a successful career and aid from person in noble position; marriage is on track and health is good.

Uhhh... marriage? Me? Also, who's the noble person giving me aid? Is it you, Emperor Tigey?

The Chinese tent also had these mosaic things that looked like large bookmarks, I wish they had a complete set for me to take. But the ones they did have were pretty.

They also had a number of other brochures in their tent that I sampled, mostly tea-related.

Lastly, we had the Germany tent. Germany, Germany, Germany. Not all of their brochures had AI art, but they had a lot of brochures, and a lot of it clearly stood out as very egregious AI art with glaring errors and even typoes on occasion when one stares closely at them.