Baltimore’s Artscape festival will have the same downtown footprint in 2027 as it has for the past two years and will again be held over the Memorial Day weekend, organizers say.
Robyn Murphy, the CEO of Create Baltimore, formerly the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts (BOPA), told its board of directors this month that her staff is starting to make plans for the 2027 edition of the annual event, considered one of the largest outdoor arts festivals in the country.
Murphy said after the meeting that the festival will have the same footprint as it had in 2025 and 2026, an area that includes War Memorial Plaza east of City Hall; the War Memorial building at 101 S. Gay St. and land under the Jones Falls Expressway where the weekly Baltimore Farmers’ Market is held.
She also said the festival will again be held over the weekend before the Memorial Day federal holiday, which falls on May 31 in 2027. If some events start on a Thursday as they have the past two years, the festival dates would be May 27 to 30.
Artscape moved downtown in 2025 after years in the Mount Royal and Station North areas. Mayor Brandon Scott and his advisors pushed for the location as a way to support his Downtown Rise! initiative, which is aimed at boosting Baltimore’s downtown core. They also moved the festival from summer dates to the Memorial Day weekend, making it the first in a series of summer festivals that also included the AFRAM festival in June and Charm City Live in September.
Create Baltimore is an independent arts agency that serves as the city’s arts council. Baltimore’s Board of Estimates this month approved a request from the Mayor’s Office to amend a 2025 contract with the agency to give it one additional year to work on arts-related events and programs, including Artscape.
The original contract called for BOPA, doing business as Create Baltimore, to serve as the “City Arts agency” and to provide certain services to Baltimore’s “creative community” from July 1, 2025, to June 30, 2026. The amendment extended the period of time for Create Baltimore to work with the Mayor’s Office to June 30, 2027.
A previous BOPA CEO, Donna Drew Sawyer, suggested during her tenure that Artscape not have one fixed location but instead rove from one area of the city to another from year to year, as a way of leveraging the power of art to stimulate the economy in different parts of Baltimore. Sawyer resigned in 2023 after Scott said he lost confidence in her ability to lead the organization, and her suggestion was never followed.
