The Canmore Folk Music Festival might be small but it’s mighty, and definitely punches above its weight. The longest-running folk fest in Alberta, founded in 1978, it is renowned for the quality and variety of its musical offerings, its outstanding volunteer cadre that ensures every visitor and performer gets the VIP treatment, its breathtaking backdrop of the Canadian Rockies, and a vibe that cannot be matched.

Sited in a park in the heart of downtown Canmore, it regularly sells out with both local and visiting music fans from across Southern Alberta, Western Canada, and the Northwestern United States.

Boasting three stages in the park and a fourth, pub stage at the nearby heritage Union Hall, the festival features amazing music, great food, and crafts in a stunning, intimate, and family-friendly setting.

On each of those four stages, patrons get a full day of a constantly changing menu of folk, blues, world, roots, and alt-country. Each day stage performances feature a collaboration of talent from all of the international touring performers that come to the festival. Throughout the days these workshop sessions offer the potential for the kind of “lightning in a bottle” marriage of talent that leaves patrons talking for years. In the evenings the main stage concert features six headliners in individual performances nestled in an amphitheatre of pine trees and mountains.

Annually the festival hosts 21,000 visitors over three days, not including the hundreds who show up for the free Festival Friday concert.