Fairport Village is small. You can walk from the Liftbridge to Packett's Landing in about four minutes. And yet, between August 1 and the last weekend of the month, the village and the town around it host three separate music festivals with almost nothing in common except the zip code. If you have lived here long enough to remember when August meant Canal Days recovery and a quiet Farmers Market, the current calendar is a different animal.
Here is what is actually on, what makes each weekend distinct, and what is quietly changing along the canal while the stages are being built.
The August arc, at a glance
The three weekends are not variations on a theme. Each one draws a different crowd, sits in a different venue type, and asks something different of you as a resident who has to live with the traffic afterward.
| Weekend | Event | Venue | Format |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aug. 1 | JJ Grey & Mofro | Perinton Center Park Amphitheater, 1350 Turk Hill Rd. | Single ticketed show, lawn seating |
| Aug. 14–16 | Hoochenanny Music & Whiskey Festival | Center Park West and the Perinton Amphitheater | Three-day festival, Friday free, Sat/Sun ticketed |
| Late August | Fairport Music Festival | Bars and outdoor stages inside the village | Two-day, ~60 bands, wristband gets you into every venue |
That last one is the outlier, and it is the one most worth understanding if you are new here.
Aug. 1: One night at the amphitheater
JJ Grey & Mofro play Perinton Center Park Amphitheater on Saturday, Aug. 1, 2026 at 7:00 PM. This is the ticketed programming that Rochester Events took over starting in 2023, and it slots into what is otherwise a free Sunday-night town concert series. The amphitheater sits behind the Perinton Community Center on Turk Hill Road, not in the village, which matters for a practical reason: parking is up there, not down by the canal, and the shuttle-and-walk logistics that dominate the other two weekends do not apply.
A few house rules that catch first-timers off guard. Patrons are permitted to bring in one sealed bottle of water, but all other outside food, drinks and alcohol are not permitted. Lawn chairs are fine in general admission. Pets, bikes, and skateboards are not. If you have been to the free Sunday shows and assumed the same coolers-and-blankets rules apply, they do not.
Aug. 14–16: Hoochenanny, and why it landed here
Hoochenanny is the new one, and it is worth explaining because "whiskey festival" undersells what is actually happening on Center Park's grass. Organizers announced the lineup for the 2026 Hoochenanny Festival, a three-day event running Aug. 14–16 at Center Park in Perinton, featuring 20 musical acts and more than 30 whiskey distillers.
The lineup is broader than any single band suggests. Friday, Aug. 14: Lit, Toadies, Cracker, Rudy Nuño & The Broadcasters; Saturday, Aug. 15: My Morning Jacket, Guster, Tommy Brunett's All-Star Cavalcade of Scoundrels, Grace Bowers; Sunday, Aug. 16: Modest Mouse, Joywave, Amigo the Devil, Karina Rykman. That is a booking sheet that would not look out of place at a mid-sized destination festival. Sitting in Perinton, it feels miscast in the best way.
Two pieces of context that matter for locals. First, the pricing structure is unusual: general admission for Friday will be free, while paid tickets will be required for Saturday and Sunday. Friday is genuinely a "walk over after work" proposition. Second, this is not a Perinton-native event. The inaugural installment was held in Geneseo in 2023, and after a one-year hiatus, the event moved to Irondequoit's Camp Eastman last year. That it has landed at Center Park for 2026 is a small win for the town's amphitheater programming and worth paying attention to as a signal about what else might get booked here in future summers.
Late August: The Fairport Music Festival, which is not what it sounds like
The Fairport Music Festival is the one that confuses newcomers. It is not a stage in a park with a ticket booth. It is a village-wide bar crawl with live music, and a single wristband is your all-access pass.
For a sense of scale: the festival features over 60 bands performing at bars, restaurants, and stages in the village, and ticket sales benefit Golisano Children's Hospital. On a typical Saturday, music kicks off at B-Side at 11:30 a.m., then at noon the music starts at the North Stage, South Stage on the canal, East Stage on Power, Rustic Taco, Fairport Brewing Company, Iron Smoke Distillery, and TJ Ryan's Pub, with later sets at Tin Cup Social, the Local Sounds Collaborative Stage, and Fairport Brauhaus. Mulconry's runs late.
The reason to know all of that: the venue list is the same set of businesses you already patronize. If you have a standing Friday-night spot at Iron Smoke or a Saturday coffee routine near B-Side, the festival is not visiting your neighborhood. It is happening inside your neighborhood.
Two numbers to hold together. Since the festival's start, it has raised nearly $3 million for the hospital, including $125,000 for the pediatric treatment center playroom. That is over twenty years of the same core group of volunteers moving through the village. The 2025 festival raised $320,829.26 for the local hospital, credited to musicians, vendors, community, local business partners, volunteers, and attendees. A single weekend, north of a quarter-million dollars, funneled through the businesses on Main Street. It is a real economic event, not just a music one.
The 2026 lineup was set to be announced in July, so by the time you are reading this, the schedule is on the festival site.
What to do with the Saturdays in between
August has five Saturdays in 2026, and only two of them are festival days. The other three are for the market.
The Fairport Farmers Market runs Saturdays, May 2 – November 21, 2026, from 8am - 12pm, in the Village Landing parking lot behind Bonnie and Clyde's in the historic bank building and Starbucks, 58 South Main Street. Two things about that location worth flagging for residents who have been away for a season. Parking behavior around the market gets policed: please do not park in the Starbucks designated parking spots. And Bonnie & Clyde itself is worth its own Saturday visit if you have not been. Bonnie & Clyde is an American restaurant in the Village of Fairport brought to you by Greg and Jodi Johnson, housed in the original Fairport National Bank built in 1924, and it features seasonal American Cuisine, a global wine list and a curated craft cocktail bar.
The rest of the village's restaurant bench is deep enough to plan around whichever weekend you are working with. Compané Trattoria on Parce Avenue does modern Italian American under chef-owner Brendon Clar. Mulconry's, TJ Ryan's, and Fairport Village Inn round out the sit-down options. Riki's on Main handles the breakfast shift seven days a week.
The canal-side building that is about to change
If you have driven past the Box Factory smokestack lately and wondered what is happening with the low building at the east end of that parking lot, the answer landed in late July.
A historic property in the village of Fairport could see new life in the near future. Proposed renderings show potential for a new restaurant and apartment housing at the former site of BME Associates, an engineering firm. Situated along the Erie Canal and off of Fairport's Main Street, the structure is found at the east end of the Box Factory building's parking lot, not to be missed by the iconic smokestack above.
The specifics that make this more than a rumor: a Rochester restaurant owner told News 8 the new restaurant would be called Blackbird, an American contemporary eatery featuring a rooftop bar overlooking the water, and the property would also convert into six apartments above the business on the second floor, according to a village representative. Timing is aggressive. A building permit is currently pending and the restaurant owner hopes to have the work completed by December, with proposals currently under review by the village of Fairport planning board.
For residents, two things are worth watching. First, a rooftop bar overlooking the canal is a new form factor for Fairport. The village has plenty of patio seating at grade, but nothing elevated over the water. Second, six apartments in an early-1900s canal-side building is exactly the kind of adaptive reuse that keeps the village walkable rather than converting these bones into offices or storage. If you have opinions about how the east end of the canal walk should feel, the planning board is the room where those opinions carry weight this fall.
Planning your August, in order
If you only pick one weekend, pick the Fairport Music Festival. It is the one that uses the village itself as the venue, and it is the only one that puts you inside the businesses you already know.
If you want a low-effort night out, JJ Grey on Aug. 1 is a single show with lawn chairs and a shuttle from the Ayrault Road lot.
If you want a headliner you would otherwise drive to Buffalo or Toronto to see, block Hoochenanny weekend. Free Friday. Modest Mouse on Sunday. That does not happen in a village this size very often.
And on the Saturdays between, the market is doing what it has been doing since long before any of this was on the calendar. Local produce. Twenty-year regulars. Bonnie & Clyde's patio if you want to make a morning of it.
If you are thinking about what your next move in Fairport looks like, whether that is a canal-side rental, a village walk-to-everything single-family, or a Perinton spread closer to the amphitheater, Bonnie Pagano and the team know these blocks the way you know your own street. Get in touch when you are ready to talk.
