LeMoyne Chain of Parks Art Festival in Tallahassee, Florida

The Chain of Parks Art Festival is LeMoyne Arts' free, juried spring fine art show held in downtown Tallahassee's Bloxham, Lewis and Randolph parks, with the 2027 festival set for April 17 and 18.

The festival site says the 2027 event will take place under the live oaks of downtown Tallahassee's Bloxham, Lewis and Randolph Chain of Parks, that it is free to the public, and that visitors can see and buy work from over 170 nationally juried artists. The 2026 festival, a past event, ran Saturday, April 18, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday, April 19, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., according to the festival's dates and times page, which still showed the 2026 schedule when checked.

The parks themselves belong to the City of Tallahassee. The City's parks map lists the Park Avenue Chain of Parks as sites 73 through 79, with a total area of 4.0 acres along Park Avenue. The festival's stated mission, on its history page, is to present an outdoor festival of high-quality original artwork and entertainment for Tallahassee area residents, attract visitors, foster the careers of artists and vendors, and raise funds for the operation of LeMoyne Arts Foundation, Inc.

The Tallahassee festival started in 2001 with about 50 local and regional artists and, by its own account, has ranked among Sunshine Artist Magazine's top 100 fine art festivals every year since 2015.

According to the festival's history, it was designed to give the Tallahassee community an outdoor fine art experience previously not found in the region and took its name from the downtown Chain of Parks. After eight years, a small group of LeMoyne volunteers saw the potential to grow it into a larger regional event, and it became volunteer-driven. The rankings below are the festival's own list of its Sunshine Artist Magazine results.

The festival's own pages do not agree on the latest figure. The history page lists the most recent ranking as number 3 nationally in 2025, while the About the Festival page introduces the 2027 event as ranked the number 5 fine art festival in the nation, number 1 in Florida. Both are the festival's statements; the magazine itself was not checked.

Local government has noted the ranking for years. Leon County's March and April 2019 District 3 newsletter promoted the April 27 and 28, 2019 festival, open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., as nationally ranked in the top 5 fine art festivals by Sunshine Artist for two years running, drawing tens of thousands of people from the Big Bend region to see 170 or more artists. The City of Tallahassee's 2021 Year in Review names the LeMoyne Chain of Parks Art Festival among the in-person events the City supported as events re-emerged during the pandemic, with health safety protocols in place.

The County now funds the festival directly. The Leon County Tourist Development Council's July 11, 2024 agenda names the LeMoyne Chain of Parks Art Festival one of its first three Legacy Event grants, with awards of $65,950 for fiscal year 2022, $68,500 for FY 2023 and $70,500 for FY 2024, and measured visitors of 3,057, 3,479 and 4,133, with 1,754, 1,427 and 1,662 room nights. It projects $110,000 grants for 2026 and 2027 in Tallahassee. The County's visitor counts are far below the organizer's 40,000 to 42,000 attendance estimate; the agenda does not define its visitor measure, so the two figures are not directly comparable.

Artists are picked through a blind jury from hundreds of applicants, and the Tallahassee festival adds a heritage art row, a children's area and chalk art to the booths.

The festival's About page says hundreds of artists apply each year and are selected through a blind jury process for a balanced mix of fine and heritage art across mediums and price points, with $10,000 or more in awards. The Heritage Art Row is a shady section along Tunnicliff Lane, leading to LeMoyne's gallery and gardens on North Gadsden Street, set aside for self-identified folk and heritage artists. The Children's Park, run in partnership with Leon County Schools, offers artistic experiences for children, a Jacques Le Moyne encampment and Local Culture tents, and is free.

The festival reports its own 2025 results on the same page: estimated weekend attendance of 40,000 to 42,000, average artist sales of $5,000, more than 70 volunteers, over 100 Leon County School students performing, and $10,300 awarded in prize money to a field of over 150 juried fine artists plus folk and heritage artists. These are the organizer's figures, not independent counts.

The 2026 Tallahassee festival opened with an upcycled sculpture exhibit in March and closed with a marching band procession on Sunday, April 19.

The Tallahassee schedule below comes from the festival's dates and times page for 2026; the 2027 schedule had not replaced it when the page was checked on October 18, 2026.

The Sunday procession, the festival says, started at the Chalk Art Oasis entrance on Van Beck Lane, went to Center Court, down Zerbe Lane to the Children's Park and ended on Tunnicliff Lane. The festival's main stage sits in Center Court on Calhoun Street in downtown Tallahassee, according to its About page.

Visitors park in the Kleman Plaza or Eastside garages for $5 and ride a free shuttle to the downtown Tallahassee parks.

The festival's parking guide lists free shuttle pick-ups at the Kleman Plaza Garage and the Eastside Garage, each with $5 event parking. Kleman Plaza riders are dropped at Monroe Street and East Park Avenue near the Community Corner, and Eastside Garage riders on Calhoun Street behind the main stage. Shuttle questions go to the City of Tallahassee at (850) 891-2607.

The Cascades Garage is a short walk from the parks but is not on the shuttle route. The guide warns drivers to avoid red-bagged meters to prevent towing and says all other downtown Tallahassee meters are free during the weekend. Accessible parking is on South Gadsden Street at meters marked with blue bags, with entry through a Tallahassee Police Department barricade on showing a placard; other accommodations can be requested by email at least 72 hours ahead.

LeMoyne Arts is a Tallahassee visual arts center founded in 1963 whose campus expansion received Tourist Development Tax grants through the Community Redevelopment Agency.

LeMoyne's history page says it was founded in 1963 in Tallahassee's Park Avenue historic district, first behind a bank on South Calhoun Street, and is named for Jacques LeMoyne de Morgues, an artist on a sixteenth-century French expedition to Florida. It says LeMoyne codified a nondiscrimination clause in its by-laws, the first private organization in Tallahassee to do so. Its gallery is the restored 1854 Meginnis-Munroe House at 125 N. Gadsden Street, its education center is at 121 N. Gadsden Street, and its education programs offer high school scholarships and over 100 classes and camps a year. The ceramics program moved in spring 2023 to 417 E. Call St., and the Call Street buildings reopened in 2024 as The Studios of LeMoyne. Its mission is to promote and advance education, interest and participation in the contemporary visual arts.

Leon County records show the public share. A February 16, 2021 County Commission agenda item says LeMoyne's Art for Always project was awarded $1 million in July 2018 toward the $3 million construction of an art education center and renovation of its sculpture garden downtown, and that the CRA Board later voted to reallocate $1.8 million first awarded to TLH Arts, with $800,000 going to a modified LeMoyne project and $1 million to the Ashmore Building in Frenchtown. A March 21, 2023 County agenda item records that the CRA Board approved, on February 23, 2023, a grant for LeMoyne's Art for Always Crossing the Finish Line, the final phase of renovating its art education building, as one of three awards totaling $2,049,000 in Tourist Development Tax funds.

The festival bans Styrofoam, limits single-use plastics and relies on City of Tallahassee recycling bins and water refill stations in the parks.

The festival's Greening the Festival page describes a long-standing partnership with Sustainable Tallahassee, says the festival was recognized by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection for its recycling, and reports a recycling rate of 72.06 percent for the 2018 festival, a figure the festival publishes about itself. It asks visitors to use the City of Tallahassee recycling and trash bins throughout the parks and to refill bottles at the City's free water refill station. In 2025, it says, it teamed up with Tallahassee State College's Wakulla Environmental Institute to compost food waste from the VIP and behind-the-scenes areas.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, by re-reading the Chain of Parks festival's About, history, schedule, parking and greening pages, LeMoyne Arts' history and mission pages, two Leon County agenda items on CRA arts grants, a 2019 Leon County newsletter, a July 2024 Leon County tourism agenda, and the City of Tallahassee parks map and 2021 Year in Review.