Kawartha Craft Beer & Food Festival

Del Crary Park occupies the western shore of Little Lake in the heart of Peterborough, Ontario, a position that gives the Kawartha Craft Beer and Food Festival its most fundamental asset: a genuinely beautiful urban lakefront setting within walking distance of the city’s downtown core and a short drive from the lock system of the Trent-Severn Waterway. The 9th annual festival runs Friday, June 5, and Saturday, June 6, 2026, with Friday’s program running from 4:00 to 11:00 p.m. and Saturday from 1:00 to 11:00 p.m. Ontario craft breweries, cideries, distilleries, and local food vendors fill the park for both days, with live music providing continuous programming through the evening hours of both sessions. A dedicated Kids Zone for children 12 and under is confirmed for the 2026 edition, expanding the festival’s appeal beyond the craft beer community to families who want a lakefront summer evening with programming for children alongside the adult-oriented sampling.

The Kawartha Lakes region’s craft brewing sector has developed substantially over the past decade, producing operations whose output has moved consistently from local novelty to provincial recognition. The festival’s organizing committee prioritizes Ontario producers over national or import brands, which gives the tasting program a genuine regional identity that larger, more commercially oriented beer festivals frequently sacrifice for name recognition. Lawn games, merchandise vendors, and the park’s natural setting along the lake’s edge provide ancillary programming that makes the festival a viable full-evening destination regardless of how engaged a visitor is with the craft beer program itself.

Peterborough and the Trent-Severn

Peterborough has developed a cultural identity that reflects its dual character as a mid-sized Ontario city and the gateway to the Kawartha Lakes and Trent-Severn Waterway system. The Peterborough Lift Lock at 355 Hunter Street East, the highest hydraulic lift lock in the world at 19.8 meters, operates as both a functional canal lock and a National Historic Site open to visitors who can watch the lock chamber raise and lower boats to the scale of a small apartment building. The lock has operated continuously since 1904 and remains one of the more quietly impressive pieces of engineering on the Canadian inland waterway system. The Art Gallery of Peterborough at 250 Crescent Street provides a free-admission contemporary art space on the Little Lake shoreline directly adjacent to the Del Crary Park festival grounds.

If You’re Going with Kids
The Peterborough Museum and Archives at 300 Hunter Street East covers the city’s history through collections that include the Champlain and the Trent-Severn’s construction period with particular depth. The Canadian Canoe Museum at 910 Monaghan Road, the world’s largest collection of canoes and kayaks, provides a full-morning engagement for children interested in watercraft or wilderness travel, with a restored 1904 canoe building preserved as a working museum space adjacent to the main collection galleries.

Nearby Accommodations

Peterborough’s downtown lodging concentrates within easy walking distance of Del Crary Park along Hunter and Charlotte Streets. For vacation rental properties on the Kawartha Lakes system within range of the festival and the Trent-Severn Waterway recreation corridor, look on Lake.com.