By James Windell
By all measures, South Haven’s 62nd National Blueberry Festival was a resounding success.
This year’s festival, running from Thursday, August 6 through Sunday, August 9, 2026, featured a parade, live music performances, a craft show, a classic car show, a blueberry-themed 5k race, pancake breakfasts – and so much more.
Hundreds of people flocked to the Huron Street Pavilion on Saturday morning for the Kiwanis Club’s blueberry pancake breakfast. On Sunday, it was another blueberry pancake breakfast at the South Haven Regional Airport, where the Rotary Club served more than 2000 people. Those two breakfasts were two umbrella events that got the two weekend days of jam-packed activities off to great starts.
According to Blueberry Festival Board member Tyler Wilson, the festival was a success. “There were a lot of people in town,” Wilson says. “But our sponsors and volunteers really made a lot of the events happen. We had 320 volunteers and without them the festival literally wouldn’t happen.”
Wilson added that all of the umbrella events went “awfully well.” He noted that there was record attendance at the airport fly-in events including the classic car show.
Visit South Haven Director Jennifer Sistrunk said that from her perspective the weekend was very successful. She points to the organization of the festival’s board for bringing it altogether.
“I volunteered at the pie-eating contest and I observed how well organized things were,” Sistrunk says. “It takes hundreds of volunteers. and they did an outstanding job. This year, in particular, they did a really great job.”
And the weather?
No problem. The weather was fantastic up until late Sunday afternoon – when organizers decided it was best to shut the Craft Show down an hour early before the storm came.
But even that didn’t spoil a weekend that was full of activities from Lake Arvesta Farms to South Beach and from the South Haven Regional Airport to the Blue Star Art Collective on Blue Star Highway.
A visitor from St. Louis, Missouri summed up the festival when watching the parade on Saturday, “This is America the way it used to be. There is so much to do. I wish we could stay longer!”
