Atlanta’s Dogwood Festival coming back in 2027, but uncertainty lingers

“I’d say a free model is preferable,” said Dogwood board chair David Shutley. “We’re thrilled to be able to continue. People responded to our fundraising efforts and we brought in the money we needed to.”

New Dogwood Festival director Lanna Rudeseal, who took over July 1, said in an email to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the festival generated a profit this year, enabling the event to come back next year.

To generate more income moving forward, she said, “We have several programs in process, including on-site benefits for each person who donates to support the festival that will provide added value for attendees.”

The festival, consistently profitable in the 2010s, lost sponsorship dollars after the COVID-19 pandemic and, with costs escalating, shed its entire $500,000 in financial reserves by last year. In desperation, Rudeseal’s predecessor Brian Hill said the event needed to raise $250,000 from individual donors to keep the festival alive.

In the end, the organization brought in only $72,000 but said it was able to make up the difference by charging a modest entry fee of $10 to attend the annual event, which features 260 artists, food trucks, a kids area and music.

Hill said it was too expensive to procure a festival permit to fully fence off the area and create what is called in the industry a “hard ticket” event, where anyone who enters must have a ticket.

Credit: RDO

Credit: RDO

Instead, the organizers chose a “soft” ticket situation, where visitors either prepaid or paid if they entered at four specific spots. The park was otherwise open to anybody to enter without a ticket.

Much to Hill’s surprise, on Saturday afternoon of this year’s event, the City of Atlanta parks department forced organizers to make the event a donations-only setup instead of making entrants pay for a ticket.

In April, a City of Atlanta spokesperson provided a statement to the AJC, saying the Dogwood Festival had a permit that prohibited ticket sales.

“On Saturday, city staff instructed the festival to discontinue mandatory entry fees after observing obstructions at entry points,” the city said.

Hill said this contradicted what he was told by the mayor’s chief of staff, Courtney English, last August by phone. He also said he was confused because the city cleared entry plans on Friday and ticket sales were widely publicized for months.

“We wouldn’t have gone forward without making it a ticketed event,” Hill said after the 2026 Dogwood festival concluded.

In an interview with the AJC this week, Hill said, “We can’t get the city to do soft tickets for us.”

Credit: (Ben Gray for the AJC)

Credit: (Ben Gray for the AJC)

That was confirmed by city spokesman Michael Smith. He said the Dogwood Festival could apply in 2027 for the pricier outdoor vending permit that Shaky Knees Music Festival uses in September. Otherwise, ticketing is not an option.

Rudeseal, who has had various roles with the festival since 2007, declined to say how much the Dogwood Festival received from ticket sales this year. She also did not have an attendance estimate, though Hill during the event this spring said attendance appeared to have dropped about one-third from 2025.

“While attendance was down a bit in 2026,” Shutley said, “the response we received from patrons, artists and sponsors was overwhelmingly positive.”

Nonprofits are required to file a 990 tax form each year to the federal government. The Dogwood Festival’s most recent 990 covering 2024 showed $831,000 in revenue and $953,000 in expenses, a deficit of $122,000.

The festival was initially created in 1936 by local garden clubs and civic-minded residents, including Walter Rich, who ran the Rich’s department stores. It was a way to highlight the beauty of the city during the blooming of the dogwoods and featured concerts, a parade, pageants and a carnival.

The event fell dormant during World War II until 1964, when it was revived by the Women’s Chamber of Commerce. The festival for a time encompassed dozens of events over multiple days in various locations. There were dog shows, hot air balloon races and Easter egg hunts.

By the early 1990s, the festival focused on a single weekend and location: Piedmont Park. That’s where it has stayed since, except for a drought-ridden 2008 when it temporarily decamped to the Lenox Square mall parking lot.