Global Roots Music

Returning to the downtown riverfront from October 9–11, 2026, the free Richmond Folk Festival proves that tradition is far from frozen in time. Across six dynamic stages on Brown’s Island, master artists—from Héctor “Coco” Barez’s electrified Puerto Rican bomba and the Chuck Brown Band’s 50th-anniversary go-go beats to Tradition-ILL’s Indigenous hip-hop/powwow fusion—boldly reinvent ancestral arts for a vibrant, modern celebration of global culture.