Last updated on April 13th, 2026 at 06:41 am
Cedar Key was devastated by Hurricane Helene in 2024, but the resilient community is rebuilding. The 2026 art festival is back to two days and a hundred artists and hoping visitors will return to support their recovery.
What’s different about the Cedar Key Art Festival is that this isn’t your cookie-cutter commercial art fair, filled with the same old food vendors and the same old production-line art.
Local nonprofits, such as the Lion’s Club, the Woman’s Club, the students from Future Farmers of America and others prepare the food sold in the park as fundraisers. You can expect seafood specialties, baked treats, fresh-squeezed lemonade and more.
Officially called the Old Florida Celebration of the Arts, the Cedar Key Festival is one of the oldest art fairs in Florida, founded in 1964. It attracts more than 15,000 people each year, according to organizers.
It’s a juried fine art fair, which means it attracts 100 serious artists vying for more than $14,000 in prize money. The fair has a great reputation — It has been named one of the top small town art fairs in the country and more than 200 artists applied to participate. Proceeds benefit the Cedar Key Arts Center and local non-profit organizations that serve homemade goodies and local seafood in beachfront City Park.
Like Cedar Key itself, the Cedar Key Art Festival is a slice of authentic Old Florida. This historic small town is located on an island on Florida’s Gulf coast, about 60 miles west of Ocala. It’s not near any city, and that is part of what has preserved its small-town flavor and historic buildings. It attracts artists and visitors who want to slow down and appreciate nature.
The Cedar Key Art Festival is free.
Booths for the 100 artists line the quaint historic main street. After the 2021 pandemic show, when event planners reduced the number of artists and added more space around the booth, the event got the best ratings from visitors and artists ever, according to Bev Ringenberg, president of the Cedar Key Arts Center. So the layout has continued, eliminating the typical art-festival “tunnel” effect and providing more space for artists and visitors.
Make a day of it
Cedar Key is worth a visit any weekend — it’s especially great for kayaking and beaches on off-short islands.
Here are six things to do when visiting Cedar Key and a look at its history.
Cedar Key is also the center of clam farming and other aquaculture. When you’re there, you can stop at Southern Cross Sea Farms, 12170 FL-24 (352-543-5980) for a bag of local clams or other seafood.
While visiting the Cedar Key Art Festival, you also can rent kayaks. There are two main kayak outfitters in town with comparable pricing: On the town beach Cedar Key Adventures and located on the highway into town Cedar Key Paddling.
An outstanding kayak destination is Atsena Otie, a half mile away. Atsena Otie Key is an island that was home to the original town built in the Cedar Keys, a cluster of small islands. Its main business was a pencil-wood factory and, in the 1890s, it had several hundred residents. That ended when the hurricane of 1896 and a 10-foot storm surge flattened the town.
Today, the historic island of Atsena Otie Key is managed by the Cedar Keys National Wildlife Refuge. You can see the old cemetery and the main street is now a path through the woods under a canopy of oaks.
If you paddle around the island, it’s a 1.5 mile trip. More ambitious paddlers can go on to other nearby islands. Long-time kayak outfitter Tom Leibert, now retired, says all of the other islands have nice beaches, though their interiors are off-limits as part of the Cedar Keys NWR. The birding in the Cedar Keys is exceptional; Leibert says every island has an eagle nest.
Tips for visiting the Cedar Key Art Festival
- Hotels sell out quickly, but there are always cancellations. For accommodations, call the Cedar Key Chamber of Commerce, which keeps a list of who has a room. The number is 352-543-5600.
- A good option — one popular with the visiting artists — are nearby campgrounds. Here’s a Florida Rambler story on camping near Cedar Key.
- Be patient with traffic and parking. This is a small town with a lot of visitors for art festival weekend. Visitors park along the town’s streets and if the festival is a big success, you’ll walk four or five blocks through town to reach it.
Resources when visiting Cedar Key
- A Florida Rambler guide to visiting Cedar Key
- Old Florida Celebration of the Arts: the festival website
- Florida Rambler story on RV camping in Cedar Key
- The Island Hotel
- Shell Mound area of Lower Suwannee National Wildlife Refuge
- Manatee Springs State Park
- Cedar Blessings RV Campground
- Cedar Key RV Resort
Thank you for all your time & efforts in providing us with helpful information over the yrs.
How nice for you to say! Thank you! :-)
Thanks, I was quoting info from Cedar Key that said it was the largest producer of clams in the eastern United States, thus I meant east coast of US. But when I went to check this, I am seeing Virginia claiming that title. So it’s now “The seafood is especially worth trying, because Cedar Key is one of the country’s largest producers of farmed clams.” Thanks for reading so closely!