Springtime Tallahassee

Springtime Tallahassee is the capital city's spring festival, a Friday music festival on Kleman Plaza followed by a Saturday Grand Parade down Monroe Street and Jubilee in the Park, set for April 2 and 3, 2027.

The festival site lists the 59th annual Springtime Tallahassee Festival for April 2 and 3, 2027, and calls it Tallahassee's signature spring festival, celebrating the city's history, music, food and community since 1967. The 2026 festival, now past, was the 58th: the City of Tallahassee's road closure notice of March 25, 2026 described the 58th annual events on March 27 and 28, 2026, with the Music Festival on Friday and the 5K and 10K races, parade and Jubilee in the Park on Saturday.

Leon County counts the festival among its tourism Legacy Events. The Leon County Tourist Development Council's July 11, 2024 agenda lists Springtime Tallahassee, Market Days and the LeMoyne Chain of Parks Art Festival as the first three Legacy Event grants, with three-year funding agreements for fiscal years 2022 to 2024, and describes Springtime Tallahassee as a community and regional event attracting vendors and parade entries from as many as 30 states.

Leon County tourism staff measured the fiscal year 2024 festival at 9,360 visitors, 2,030 room nights and $2,325,700 in economic impact, well below the organizers' own published estimate.

The figures below come from the Leon County Tourist Development Council's July 11, 2024 agenda, which reports the Legacy Event grant awarded each year and the measured results. Years are the County's fiscal year labels, as the agenda gives them. The same agenda projects $110,000 grants for each of 2025, 2026 and 2027, with targets rising to 16,174 visitors and 3,507 room nights by 2027; those projections are the County's planning numbers, not results.

The organizers publish larger numbers. Springtime Tallahassee's About page says visitor spending over the festival weekend is calculated at over $6 million, that it attracts over 20,000 out-of-town visitors and generates more than 8,500 hotel room nights in Leon County, and that restaurants, shopping and lodging take more than 70 percent of visitor spending. The page does not say which year or study those figures come from, and they do not match the County's measured results, so both are reported here with their sources. The Grand Parade page separately claims more than 70,000 spectators a year, an organizer estimate.

Springtime Tallahassee, Inc. says it was chartered in 1967 as an organization dedicated to keeping Tallahassee as Florida's capital, and that its first festival was held in 1968.

According to the organization's history page, local business and civic leaders organized the group, and by the fall of 1967 more than 20 groups were planning the First Annual Spring Festival for March and April 1968. The organization describes itself as a civic group dedicated to the promotion and preservation of Tallahassee's history, and says its original home and meeting place was the David S. Walker Library in downtown Tallahassee, a building its members raised money to restore and that remained open to the public until it was sold in 2019. Those are the organization's own statements about itself; the political history of the capital is not restated here from that page.

The State Archives of Florida document the parade's long run on Monroe Street. Its Florida Memory collection holds a 1970 photograph of Dade County Mayor Chuck Hall in the Springtime Tallahassee parade, and a photograph from April 1978 of the Lincoln High School marching band in the Springtime Tallahassee parade on Monroe Street, both from the Department of Commerce collection.

The Grand Parade steps off on Monroe Street just south of Brevard Street and travels south through downtown Tallahassee, past the Florida Capitol, to Madison Street.

The Grand Parade page sets the 59th parade for Saturday, April 3, 2027, at 10:30 a.m., with more than 100 participating units, including decorated floats, marching bands, dance groups, Springtime Krewes and community organizations from across North Florida and the Southeast. It says the first parade, in 1968, featured costumed participants and horse-drawn units, while today's parade includes large mechanical floats. The page also introduces the 2026 grand marshal, Tallahassee native and Fox News anchor Shannon Bream.

The City's 2026 closure notice shows how much of downtown Tallahassee the parade takes. The float staging area closed at 6:30 a.m., and the parade route closed at 9:15 a.m. and reopened at about 12:30 p.m., with Monroe Street closed from West Tennessee to Gaines streets, including all cross streets, Tennessee Street closed from Calhoun to Adams, and westbound Apalachee Parkway closed at Franklin Avenue. North Monroe Street had no southbound traffic from Seventh Avenue to Brevard Street during staging.

Jubilee in the Park fills downtown Tallahassee's Chain of Parks from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on parade day with crafts, food, a children's area and stages, after a Friday night music festival on Kleman Plaza.

The Jubilee page lists the 2027 Jubilee for Saturday, April 3, 2027, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the downtown Chain of Parks, with arts and crafts booths from local, regional and national vendors, a food court, and a tobacco-free Children's Park. Its 2026 entertainment schedule, still posted, put pre-parade music by the Capital City Band of Tallahassee State College in Ponce de Leon Park from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m., a community stage in McCarty Park from noon to 5 p.m. with groups such as the Tallahassee Ballet and Young Actors Theatre, and a Jubilee Music Stage at College and Adams streets from noon to 5 p.m.

The Friday concert needs its own closures. The City's 2026 notice blocked northbound Duval Street at Madison Street from 5:30 a.m. on Friday to build the Music Festival stage, with state employees still able to reach their parking garages, and closed westbound West Pensacola Street at Duval from 9 a.m. until about 4 a.m. Saturday. On Saturday, Duval Street, Park Avenue, College Avenue and Jefferson Street near the Jubilee closed from 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m., and Franklin Boulevard closed from Tennessee to Lafayette streets from 7:30 to 9 a.m. for the 5K and 10K races. The County tourism agenda credits the first Legacy grant period with adding a second night of Music Fest Downtown on Saturday.

Events like Springtime Tallahassee file a City of Tallahassee road closure application at least 30 days ahead and pay a $25 application fee plus barricade and staffing costs.

The City's road closure application asks for the roads to be closed, the event type, anticipated attendance, whether alcohol or live music is involved, and, for a parade, a map of the route with direction of travel. Applications with less than 30 days of processing time are not approved, and Tallahassee Police Department staffing is attempted but not guaranteed; if it is not secured two weeks before the event, the organizer can cancel or modify the event.

After the event, City staff issue a final assessment, and any balance due or refund is settled within 10 business days, according to the same form. The 2026 closures described above were published by the City in its newsroom two days before the festival.

The krewes are Springtime Tallahassee's member groups, each named for a period of Florida history, and they ride in the Grand Parade.

The organization's history page keeps lists of krewe chiefs from 1972 to the present and of the Governor and First Lady of Springtime from 1972, along with grand marshals from 1976. Its Spanish Krewe page ties that krewe to the Spanish period of the Tallahassee area's past, the theme its members carry into the festival. The parade page counts Springtime Krewes among the units in the line of march.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, by re-reading Springtime Tallahassee's festival, history, parade, Jubilee, About and krewe pages, the City of Tallahassee's 2026 closure notice and road closure application, Leon County's July 2024 tourism agenda, and two State Archives photographs.