Tickets for the Maryland Renaissance Festival’s 50th season go on sale Monday, July 27, giving Southern Maryland day-trippers roughly a month’s notice before the gates of Revel Grove open in Crownsville on Aug. 29 for a nine-weekend run that continues through Oct. 25.
The Anne Arundel County festival, one of the largest and longest-running Renaissance fairs in the country, is marking its golden anniversary this year with a new ticketing system after years of frustration among fans over sellouts and long online queues. Organizers have switched to a vendor called Big Tickets, which festival officials say is intended to make the buying process more “stress free and transparent,” along with updated delivery, distribution and resale options. Tickets are expected to go on sale around 10 a.m. on July 27, and in past years some ticket categories have sold out within hours, with buyers reporting online queues stacked thousands of people deep.
The festival, set on 27 wooded acres about 45 minutes from most of Southern Maryland, traces its roots to 1977, when Minnesota lawyer Jules Smith Sr. organized the fair near Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia after investing in — and later stepping away from — the Minnesota Renaissance Festival. That first four-weekend run drew roughly 17,000 visitors to see performers including Penn and Teller and the Flying Karamazov Brothers. The fair relocated to its current Crownsville site in 1985, and Smith turned over day-to-day management to his son, Jules Smith Jr., the following year; Smith’s family has run the event ever since. Today the festival draws roughly 300,000 visitors across its nine-weekend season, with average daily crowds topping 15,000.
Unlike most Renaissance fairs, the Maryland festival follows a running storyline that advances a year at a time through the reign of King Henry VIII and his six wives. This season’s chapter is set in 1540, when Henry arrives in the fictional village of Revel Grove with his new bride, Anne of Cleves — wife No. 4 — for the village’s Harvest Festival. According to the festival’s official storyline, gossip is already circulating that the marriage is not the happy match it appears to be, and that the king privately blames his chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, for arranging it. Historically, Henry’s marriage to Anne of Cleves lasted only about six months before it was annulled, and Cromwell was executed within weeks of the annulment — a plot thread festival-goers can expect to see echoed in this year’s performances.
This year’s storyline also folds in Revel Grove’s own fictional milestone: the village’s 50-year hiring charter, tied to the historical tradition of “mop fairs,” is up for renewal, and Henry is set to decide whether Revel Grove or a rival town called Tiddington will hold the honor for the next half-century — a wink at the festival’s real-world 50th anniversary.
Beyond the royal plotline, the festival includes more than 200 performers across ten stages and taverns, continuous street entertainment, and a 3,000-seat arena that hosts armored jousting three times a day along with other large-scale exhibitions. More than 140 artisans sell handcrafted goods — including metalwork, woodwork, jewelry, leather goods, ceramics and glasswork — many of them made on-site in demonstrating shops. Food and drink options span 42 emporiums and five taverns, with festival staples including smoked turkey legs, steak on a stake and a seafood raw bar.
The 2026 season includes several themed weekends layered on top of the regular schedule. Aug. 29-30 is Children’s Weekend, when one child ages 7 to 15 gets free admission with each paying adult, and kids 6 and under are always free. Sept. 12-13 is Myth & Magic Weekend, featuring performances centered on British Isles folklore, while the run from Oct. 3 through Oct. 25 shifts into “Harvest Hollow,” bringing autumn decorations and seasonal performances into the village as Halloween approaches.
The festival runs 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. on every open day: Aug. 29-30; Sept. 5-7, 12-13, 19-20 and 26-27; and Oct. 3-4, 10-11, 17-18 and 24-25, including Labor Day Monday. The grounds are located at 1821 Crownsville Road, roughly a 45-minute to hour-long drive from most of Charles, Calvert and St. Mary’s counties depending on traffic on Route 301 and Route 50. Parking is free.
More information on tickets, the festival schedule and special events is available at rennfest.com.
