Country music hitmakers Parmalee will headline the 84th West Virginia Strawberry Festival, and former WVU football legend Owen Schmitt will serve as grand marshal of the Grand Feature Parade, festival organizers announced recently.
The headliner concert will take place Saturday, May 16, on Main Street in Buckhannon and will be free to the public. Parmalee brings six No. 1 radio hits to the stage, including “Carolina,” “Take My Name” — Billboard’s most-played country song of 2022 — and their latest chart-topper “Cowgirl.” The band’s new album, “Fell In Love With A Cowgirl,” was released in April 2025.
“Huge thank you to the City of Buckhannon for making this possible and allowing it to be completely free to the public,” the festival association wrote in its announcement.
The free concert is made possible in part by a significant increase in the city’s financial support for the festival, approved by Buckhannon City Council in December, with a portion of those public funds dedicated specifically to bringing in bigger entertainment acts.
The parade marshal is a name familiar to local football fans.
Schmitt, a former WVU fullback and NFL player, earned the nickname “Runaway Beer Truck” during his time as a Mountaineer. A walk-on at WVU in 2005, Schmitt became a starter and blocker for Steve Slaton and Pat White, and by 2007 was considered one of the best fullbacks in college football. He closed out his collegiate career with a 57-yard touchdown run in the Fiesta Bowl — a fitting connection to this year’s Strawberry Fiesta theme.
Schmitt was selected in the fifth round of the 2008 NFL Draft by the Seattle Seahawks and went on to play for the Philadelphia Eagles and Oakland Raiders before retiring. He has been an assistant coach at Greenbrier West High School since 2021, according to the festival association.
Festival organizers say Schmitt will stay after the parade to meet the public.
Shane Jenkins, president of the West Virginia Strawberry Festival Association, told Buckhannon City Council on April 2 that excitement is building faster than ever.
“The energy behind the 84th West Virginia Strawberry Festival has reached an all-time high,” Jenkins said. “The momentum that we’re seeing across the board right now is unlike any we’ve seen. We feel energy just throughout the community.”
Jenkins said the festival’s social media presence reflects that momentum, with the association’s Facebook page reaching over 800,000 views in the last 28 days.
“Those are numbers that we usually see during a Strawberry Festival,” Jenkins said. “We’re expecting higher attendance off of that alone.”
The Grand Feature Parade will feature 23 bands — a reversal from years past when organizers scrambled to fill the musical lineup.
“We usually are trying to find bands still at this point in time, just trying to wrangle up whoever we can,” Jenkins said. “We flipped a little bit this year, and we have 23 bands committed, so we’re trying to find things to fill in between those musical groups. It’s a good problem to have.”
New for 2026, the festival is adding Tuesday night live entertainment at the Jawbone Park stage and a large-scale entertainment act on Friday evening on the Main Street stage. Jenkins said the festival invested 50% more in its family fun night at West Virginia Wesleyan College, increased the Grand Feature Parade budget by 16.7% and boosted general stage entertainment spending by 14.3%.
On the vendor side, Jenkins said the festival has 18 confirmed food vendors and roughly 20 market vendors — up from 14 market vendors last year.
“We pretty well maximized out the amount of spaces that were available to us for our food vendors,” he said.
The Disc-Connected K9s, a world champion frisbee dog group with a rescue-focused mission, will also return to the festival this year with shows at the lot beside the Stockert Youth and Community Center throughout the week.
Jenkins told council that the festival’s reach extends beyond Upshur County this year. The newly crowned queen, Sophia Wagner of Clarksburg, and teen queen, Elizabeth McDonald of Moundsville, are already drawing interest from their home communities.
Jenkins closed his remarks with a personal reflection, describing a conversation he had with a 91-year-old community member about the festival.
“We were both kind of holding back tears a little bit, I think, sharing memories and talking about the festival,” Jenkins said. “It was a different perspective for me than the childhood memories. He was talking about his memories throughout his entire lifetime. We create those moments for people, but for some people, it has been their entire lifetime.”
The 84th West Virginia Strawberry Festival runs May 9-17, 2026, in Buckhannon.
