July 16, 2026 · events · guides
Once a year, Five Points closes the streets and throws a two-day festival in honor of a tomato. It is free, it is enormous, it is genuinely strange, and it is the most East Nashville thing that happens all year.
Tomato Art Fest 2026 runs Friday, August 7 (from 5pm) through Saturday, August 8 (until 7pm), centered on Five Points at Woodland Street. It’s the 23rd year. Costumes are encouraged, which locals interpret as a dare.
Art, live music on multiple stages, food vendors, a parade, kids’ activities, shopping, and contests that include a tomato-themed costume contest and a beauty pageant for tomatoes. The whole neighborhood participates. Restaurants put tomato specials on the menu, bars build tomato cocktails, and roughly everyone you pass is wearing red.
Do not drive. This is the single most important line in this guide. Streets close, the neighborhood fills, and every parking space within a mile is gone by mid-morning Saturday. If you’re staying at The Eighteen, your car stays in our lot and you walk in. That’s the whole strategy.
Go Friday night if you want to see art. Saturday is the big day and the crowds are real. Friday evening is the same festival at half the density.
Saturday morning beats Saturday afternoon. The parade and the costume contests happen early enough that you can see them, eat, and be back on a rooftop before the peak-heat crush.
Hydrate, wear the costume, bring cash. August in Nashville is not a dry heat, it’s a wet blanket. Some vendors are cash-only.
Book your dinner now. Every restaurant in Five Points is slammed both nights. Lockeland Table and the rest of the good rooms fill weeks out. If you didn’t reserve, plan on Five Points Pizza or a food truck, both of which are correct answers anyway.
The festival’s footprint is a few blocks from our front door, which turns the hardest part of Tomato Art Fest — getting in and out — into a walk. Rooftop for the afternoon heat, parking you never have to move, and the whole thing on foot.
August books up early for exactly this reason. Check availability →