2026 Fifth Avenue Arts Festival in Gainesville Florida

April 25, 2026, 5:25 p.m. ET

The 5th Avenue Arts Festival in Gainesville celebrates the history of the Northwest Fifth Avenue area, once the hub of the city’s Black community.
Started in 1979, the festival continues to honor the area’s rich history despite changing locations and recent declines in attendance since the pandemic.
This year’s theme is “Our Sound: Celebrating the History of Black Music in Alachua County,” featuring local performers and artists.

Celebrating the history of the Northwest Fifth Avenue area continues to be at the heart of the 5th Avenue Arts Festival in Gainesville.

The area, home to the historic Seminary Lane and Pleasant Street neighborhoods, sits at the center of what was once the hub of Gainesville’s Black community, long filled with Black-owned businesses, social venues, churches, schools and more.

Though the festival has changed locations several times, it continues to celebrate the rich history of the community, said Nkwanda Jah, one of the original founders and organizers of the festival, which began in 1979. Jah also serves as executive director of the Cultural Arts Coalition, the festival’s primary organizer.

The festival has been on the decline since the COVID-19 pandemic but is slowly returning to the number of festivalgoers and vendors it once attracted, Jah said, as students from Caring and Sharing Learning School, a charter school in southeast Gainesville, performed on stage.

“A lot of people remember the festival when we had thousands of people coming out here at one time, but after COVID, we had to come back and take a lot of budget cuts,” Jah said. She added that those cuts led many artists who traveled from throughout the Southeast to make business decisions not to participate as vendors because of out-of-pocket costs.

Though there may not be an overwhelming presence of out-of-town vendors this year, the spotlight, as always, is on homegrown history makers.

The theme of the festival this year is “Our Sound: Celebrating the History of Black Music in Alachua County.”

Performances April 25 at the festival, held at the Santa Fe College Blount Center, 530 W. University Ave., included sets by the granddaughter of the late Alyne Harris, a longtime resident of the Porter’s community — a historic Black neighborhood just southeast of the Northwest Fifth Avenue area — who sold paintings at the festival for many years, as well as 1,000 Voices of North Central Florida, the Eastside High School Richard E. Parker Alumni Band, E & Friends, J2 Jazz and more.

The festival continues April 26 beginning at noon with an open mic set, followed by performances by the Smooth Flava line dance group at 1 p.m., Bill Rogers at 2 p.m., Mr. C. Scott & Geno Mays at 3 p.m. and Phil Jazz Dad at 4 p.m.

Courtney Scott has taken over as lead organizer of the festival from Jah and said the event will continue to shine a light on the history of the neighborhood.

“This festival is an opportunity for me and the community to show and display to ourselves and to our greater community some of the amazing history of Alachua County, focusing on the Fifth Avenue community,” Scott said. “It also gives us a chance to showcase amazing vendors, artists and agencies and organizations in the community that can serve as a resource for people that might not have known existed.”

The festival also provides an opportunity for the contributions of Black people and culture to be showcased to the entire community, Scott said.

Ann Crowell, who was raised in the Fifth Avenue/Pleasant Street community, said she enjoys attending the festival each year to celebrate the area’s rich history.

“This festival brings back memories,” said Crowell, who retired in 2016 after working for Alachua County Head Start fir 34 years, the last 22 as director of the program.

“I’ve been coming to this festival ever since its inception, and it just lifts up my heart to see our people come together, work together to do something for this community. I don’t want our story to be lost, and I think by coming here, it keeps it alive and I realize how important it is to share this story with our children so they to can realize that we have a history, a deep history, here in Gainesville, Florida, and it matters.”

As Crowell reflected on changes the community has seen over the past 10 to 15 years, including housing developments catering to University of Florida students and gentrification reshaping the neighborhood’s demographics, she emphasized the importance of preserving its legacy.

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