These 6 Missouri Towns Have The Most Unique Festivals

Not all festivals are created equal, and neither are the towns that host them. While most cities are just as apt to recycle the same food trucks or fireworks shows on repeat, these towns in Missouri have something a little stranger, older, or just plain better. Some festivals have people partying in the French street style; others are hunting elves or crowning a Kielbasa king. Each town has a way to leverage its quirks, creating its take on festival tradition. When the festival season comes, the streets get packed with locals, travelers, and newly curious first-timers searching for something different. If you are tired of over-commercialized events that all feel the same, and you’ve never even heard of the names on the flyer, this list is your way out. Mark your calendar and hit the road.

Carthage

When Carthage celebrates, it fills streets, squares, and skies. In August, the Marian Days Festival brings over 70,000 Vietnamese-American Catholics to the city for outdoor Mass, food booths, music, and days of community fun. It’s more than a religious gathering; it’s one of the Midwest’s largest cultural events, transforming the city into tent-filled festival grounds.

In October, the Maple Leaf Festival occupies the square for a full week. Starting in 1966 as a marching band contest, the Maple Leaf now brings parades, BBQ cookoffs, quilt shows, petting zoos, and free concerts. It ends with the largest parade in Southwest Missouri. Carthage doesn’t host events; it takes over the calendar.

Kimmswick

Two seasons, two festivals, both delightfully strange. The Kimmswick Apple Butter Festival is one of Missouri’s largest small-town events and draws over 100,000 attendees every October. Historic Main Street becomes a packed lane full of food vendors, craft booths, and old-fashioned apple butter kettles stirred with wood paddles, which create an inviting apple scent throughout the festival. The festival features live dulcimer music, horse and buggy rides, and contests like the Apple Pie Bake-Off and Apple Butter Tasting to keep the flavor stakes high.

In December, the kids take over with the Kimmswick Elf Hunt. It is a pay-to-play weekend event that turns the entire town into a scavenger hunt, where kids comb the area with a clue book and gift bag and follow the riddles from store to store to locate all of Santa’s hidden elves in exchange for prizes.

Richmond

Richmond is the only town in the state that is quirky enough to create a civic identity from wild mushrooms. It organizes the only mushroom festival in Missouri, emphasizing foraging and cooking competitions using locally harvested morels, which include a mushroom queen. It’s not food. It’s folklore and draws thousands of folks for one reason: Richmond treats mushrooms like gold.

American Celebration Day takes over Courthouse Square on June 27th. This is not a regular Fourth of July knock-off. It features DIY lawnmower parades and floats made by the community, and there are no corporate sponsors. It is one of the few untarnished patriotic festivals remaining that hasn’t been branded or corporatized, and people come because it feels real.

Sugar Creek

This town runs on kielbasa, folk dancing, and community pride. Every June, the Sugar Creek Slavic Festival showcases Slovak, Polish, and Croatian cultural heritage with delicious food, folk music, traditional dress, and North America’s largest Kolo circle dance. The Kielbasa King & Queen Contest is a crowd favorite, as participants battle it out in a spicy sausage-eating contest that’s now a local legend.

Swing back in May for the Sky-High Kite Festival, where giant kites from Great American Kites and Events soar overhead at LaBenite Park. It’s one of the few events in the Midwest devoted entirely to mega-sized kites, with food trucks and all the open space you could want to fly your own.

Pierce City

Small town, big-hearted festivals. Howdy Neighbor Days converts South Park into a fair every August with carnival rides, duck races, a beer garden, and plenty of food trucks to keep the lines moving all night. This three-day event claims the title of “The Biggest Little Festival in Southwest Missouri,” and the crowds prove that claim.

In June, the St. Mary’s Old-Fashioned Festival slows things down. There are raffle booths, pie tables, potluck lunches, and a shaded picnic on the church lawn. It feels like stepping back in time to a slower, sweeter decade.

Ste. Genevieve

Missouri’s first European settlement doesn’t hold ordinary festivals. It relives its history. Every New Year’s Eve, Ste. Genevieve’s historic district hosts La Guignolée: costumed singers performing a 250-year-old French begging song. Locals stroll through the streets, the cafes and pubs, and recite lyrics in assorted strange outfits that combine Old World tradition with present-day gaiety. You can follow the group, catch their staged performance at Valle gym, or join a watch party hosted by the Centre for French Colonial Life.

Come August, the streets are alive once again for Jour de Fête, one of Missouri’s largest craft fairs. More than 200 vendors fill the sidewalks alongside the colonial buildings. You can expect antiques, blacksmiths, handmade goods, and a weekend when history feels alive.

Not Your Average Fair

Missouri doesn’t just know how to stage a festival; it knows how to create an experience you won’t forget. These towns don’t copy and paste festivals; they build traditions that reflect who they are, be it French folk traditions, rolling balls of twine, or gnome ceremonies. You’re not just watching a parade here; you’re part of rituals, punchlines, and local pride that have been brewing for generations. There are winter ice plunges and summer pie-wrestling contests, but these destinations aren’t out to wow you. They exist because, somewhere along the way, someone thought they mattered. And that’s why they endure. If you’re looking for something a little less cookie-cutter and a lot more human, you’ve got six places to be.