BUCKHANNON – The 2026 West Virginia Strawberry Festival is just days away, with more entertainment and activities than ever.
Shane Jenkins, president of the Strawberry Festival Board of Directors, attended the Buckhannon-Upshur Chamber of Commerce meeting this week to discuss plans for the festival and to express excitement over the scheduled array of events.
“There’s a board of about 25 people, and then there are countless other volunteers who make this happen every year. We appreciate that beyond words, beyond what I can say,” Jenkins said. “This wouldn’t be possible without the community we exist in. I serve with the West Virginia Association of Fairs and Festivals, so I travel around the state, I collaborate with other event coordinators throughout the state, and we are truly one of the biggest in West Virginia.”
The theme for the festival this year is ‘Strawberry Fiesta,’ and Jenkins said he has seen more excitement for this festival than in any year during his presidency.
“We have seen more excitement than we’ve ever seen during my presidency, at least as far as people reaching out, asking questions, registering for events and things like that,” Jenkins said. “We’re hitting record numbers in registrations for every single event where we take registrations, and people have been asking questions, wanting to be involved — it’s at an all-time high. I think our board’s more excited than they’ve been in a long time.”
Jenkins said he first noticed this increased excitement during the junior royalty and teen queen pageants in March.
“We welcomed over 70 contestants. Those aren’t all Upshur County residents — a majority of those were from outside of Upshur County,” Jenkins said. “We love our locals, and we had some local winners again this year, but we do welcome people from outside the area. Our queen-elect for this year is Sophia Wagoner; she is wonderful. If you get the chance to meet her, please do so this week.”
The king this year is Matthew Born, the brother of a past Strawberry Festival queen.
“We’re excited to welcome that family back this year, and we’re trying to do some extra things to support them this year,” Jenkins said. “We want to do some special things for them behind the scenes, so meet him as well — he’s great, and they are a great family.”
The coronation for the Strawberry King and Queen will take place on Saturday, May 9 at 6:30 p.m. at the West Virginia Wesleyan College chapel.
“Now to change gears for a bit, for our 2025 events, our total economic impact was at roughly $6 million,” Jenkins said. “Along with that, we have built our partnership up with the City of Buckhannon more than ever. Most of you have probably seen that they invested heavily in our events this year, and we are trying to repay that back by making sure we maximize heads in beds and help make sure people are actually visiting our local businesses.”
The board took the city’s increased investment and decided to improve existing activities, including the Grand Feature Parade.
“We’ve increased our Grand Feature Parade budget this year by nearly 17%. There’s a lot of exciting stuff in our general entertainment budget,” Jenkins said. “That budget includes the big stage we’ve been putting up on Main Street the past couple years, the Jawbone Park stage and the entertainment that goes in between, roaming through the streets — that’s grown by nearly 15% this year in budget. The family fun night, which is important to us because that’s a free opportunity for the youth in our community, has grown by nearly 50% in budget this year, so that will be bigger than ever.”
The board has also added Tuesday night entertainment on the Jawbone Park stage.
“We typically see some vendors open that night, and we’re still giving them the option to open if they’re able to open that night, but there was kind of a lull because people would just come get food and leave,” Jenkins said. “We want people to spend some time down there at every event, so we saw an opportunity we could capitalize on.”
There will also be entertainment on the big stage on Main Street on Friday night.
“We usually set the stage up on Friday morning. It sits there until it’s actually utilized Saturday evening,” Jenkins said. “This year, with that partnership with the City of Buckhannon, we are able to add a national-level act to Friday night, so we will have two different nights of national-level entertainment on that main stage this year. We’re really excited about that Friday night — it will be Tyler Reese Tritt, who is Travis Tritt’s daughter, so we’re really excited to have her.”
On Saturday night, the stage will open with KC Bruner, and the headliner will be Parmalee.
“For the Grand Feature Parade, we have 22 bands committed right now. Normally, we have the opposite problem of what we’ve had in the past, where usually, a couple of weeks before the parade, we would have been making phone calls and scrambling to try to find some local high school bands to join our parade,” Jenkins said. “This year, we’ve had the opposite problem. We’re trying to find things to fill in between those bands, so if you’d like to put something through the Grand Feature Parade, we can probably get you set up.”
A full schedule of events for the festival can be found on their Facebook page. Jenkins said any schedule changes will be posted on Facebook, and any weather disruptions will also go out via Nixle text messages as soon as possible.
