Portland Strawberry Festival
The region's biggest spring festival — 80 years of strawberry shortcake, live music and small-town parade energy.
Crowds, live music and strawberry booths at the annual Portland Strawberry Festival
What to expect at Portland Strawberry Festival
Portland calls itself the Strawberry Capital of Tennessee, and every May since 1941 the town has thrown a four-day festival to prove it. It draws 40,000+ people to a town of 12,000 — a proper community festival with a Saturday parade, a strawberry-shortcake tent that serves thousands of servings a day, live music on two stages, a car show, a 5K, a beauty pageant and a proper carnival midway. It is the biggest event on the Robertson-Sumner-County calendar and worth planning a spring trip around.
The heart of it is the shortcake tent — $6 gets you a plate of biscuit, local strawberries and real whipped cream that the volunteer ladies of Portland assemble by the hundred. The Saturday morning parade (10am, down Main Street) is a full hour of fire trucks, tractors, high-school bands and homemade floats. Music runs Thursday through Sunday nights on the main stage; check the festival website for the year's headliners. The rides and games are cash-friendly but most vendors take cards.
It falls the second full weekend of May. Book Portland or Springfield hotels three months out — everything fills. Come Saturday for the parade and the biggest crowd, or Sunday morning for a calmer festival with all the food still open. Park at the free shuttle lots on the edge of town; downtown itself is closed to traffic. Combine with a drive to a local pick-your-own strawberry farm — several open specifically for festival week.
Questions about Portland Strawberry Festival
Free — you only pay for food, rides and shortcake.
Entry is free the whole festival, all four days.
Half a day for a proper visit; a full day if you're doing the parade and evening music.
Second full weekend of May each year, Thursday through Sunday.
No tickets for entry. Concerts and pageants may sell separate tickets — check the festival site.
Free peripheral lots with a shuttle downtown. Central parking is closed to traffic during festival hours.
Hotels near Portland Strawberry Festival
Every hotel we cover in Portland
- Quality Inn & Suites Joelton Nashville 2★ · 4.7/5 · 9697 km away
- Hampton Inn Pleasant View TN 2★ · 4.6/5 · 9697 km away
- Hampton Inn by Hilton Springfield 2★ · 4.4/5 · 9697 km away
- Holiday Inn Express & Suites Nashville North Springfield by IHG 2★ · 4.4/5 · 9697 km away
- Quality Inn Pleasant View 2★ · 3.9/5 · 9697 km away
- Quality Inn White House 2★ · 3.7/5 · 9697 km away
- Springfield Inn TN 2★ · 3.2/5 · 9697 km away
- Charming Springfield Escape with Furnished Deck 3★ · 9697 km away
- Family friendly Home w Yard: 27 Mi to Nashville 3★ · 9697 km away
- Comfort Inn White House 2★ · 9697 km away
- Hampton Inn White House 2★ · 9697 km away
- Holiday Inn Express White House by IHG 2★ · 9697 km away
- Motel 6 White House TN 2★ · 9697 km away
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