Long Grove Has Two Event Calendars Right Now. Most Residents Only Watch One.
August 13, 2026
August 13, 2026
Stand at the intersection of Robert Parker Coffin Road and Old McHenry Road on a festival weekend and you know exactly what season it is. Strawberry Fest closes the streets in June. Chocolate Fest takes over in spring. Apple Fest arrives in September with cider and hayrides. It's the Long Grove most people picture, and the Historic Downtown Long Grove Business Association has run that calendar for years.
Drive half a mile down Old McHenry to 340, or turn onto Historical Lane, and a different calendar is running at the same time. It isn't organized by the same group, it isn't listed in the same place, and if you only check longgrove.org for what's happening downtown, you'll miss most of it.
The Business Association's festivals are the ones that define Long Grove's reputation as a destination town, and for good reason. Strawberry Fest ran June 26 through 28 this year with three stages of live music and a downtown full of strawberry everything, from chocolate-dipped berries to strawberry funnel cakes. Irish Days returns for Labor Day weekend, September 5 through 7, with the Shannon Rovers Irish Pipe Band, headliners Without U2 and The Dirty Wellies, and the two contests locals actually plan their weekend around: the Best Men's Legs in a Kilt contest and the Irish Dog Contest, where costumed dogs compete for king, queen, prince, and princess honors. Apple Fest follows on September 22 through 24.
Smaller events fill the gaps between the big three-day festivals. Country Girls Night Out is scheduled for August 20 this year, a Western-themed evening where downtown shops run their own specials. Last year's version had Ma and Pa's Candy offering samples of a new "Cowboy Bark" and Olivia's Boutique customizing bandana charm necklaces on site, the kind of detail that only shows up if you were actually there or know someone who was.
All of it happens in the same footprint: the historic district around Fountain Square and the Mill Pond area, with the downtown Visitors' Center at 145 Old McHenry Road serving as home base. It's a single, walkable core, and the Business Association has spent years building festivals that fit inside it.
What doesn't fit inside that historic footprint has started showing up somewhere else.
Brothers' Field, the tiki bar and event venue at 340 Old McHenry Road, runs its own slate of programming that has nothing to do with the Business Association's festival lineup. Outdoor movie nights on a 40-foot screen. A Filipino cultural celebration this year called Taste of Philippines, built around food, live performances, and arts and cultural displays. Themed nights the venue has run under names like Country Fest, Pizza Fest, and Havana Nights. None of these require closing a street or filling a three-day weekend. They're single-night, single-purpose events that a private venue can book on its own timeline.
Buffalo Creek Brewing, on Historical Lane, took that idea a step further this summer. On June 18, the brewery hosted Culinary Fight Club's Bougie Burger Battle, a stop on a national touring cooking competition. Culinary Fight Club runs live events across 27 states and 38 cities, and Long Grove's stop pulled in chefs from around the Chicago region who had 45 seconds to raid a pantry of limited ingredients before building a burger judges would consider worth a $50 price tag. The Daily Herald called it "one of the most anticipated stops on the organization's national competition circuit." Two competitors were set to advance from the Long Grove event to the 2027 championship at Culinary Fight Fest. None of this was organized by the Business Association. It was booked directly with the brewery by a national promoter, the same way it's booked in cities across the rest of that circuit.
The Business Association's calendar is built for scale. A three-day festival needs street closures, vendor coordination, parking shuttles, and months of planning, which is exactly the kind of event a business association exists to run. That structure works well for Strawberry Fest or Irish Days, but it isn't built for a Tuesday night movie screening or a one-off burger competition that a national promoter wants to book six weeks out.
Private venues fill that gap because they can say yes on their own schedule. Brothers' Field can add a themed night whenever it wants without waiting for a seasonal planning cycle. Buffalo Creek Brewing can host an outside promoter's event without it needing to fit the Business Association's festival calendar at all. That produces two tracks running in the same small downtown: one built around big, recurring, decades-old traditions, and one built around whatever a venue decides to book next.
For a resident, that means the town's "always something happening" reputation is now doing double duty. The festivals you already know about are still there, and they're still the anchor of the Long Grove calendar. But if you want the full picture of what's actually on this month, checking the Business Association's events page alone isn't enough anymore. You'd also want to know what Brothers' Field and Buffalo Creek Brewing have booked on their own.
If you're trying to plan around both calendars, here's what's already confirmed:
Brothers' Field and Buffalo Creek Brewing don't publish a fixed seasonal schedule the way the Business Association does, so the best way to catch what they add next is to check each venue directly rather than waiting for it to show up on the village's festival page.
Long Grove gets described the same way in almost every piece written about it: colorful historic buildings, a covered bridge, a downtown built for an afternoon of strolling. All of that is true, and the festival calendar built around it is worth the reputation. But the town's newer venues are quietly stretching what a random Thursday in downtown Long Grove can look like, from a national cooking competition to a Filipino cultural celebration to a movie under the stars. That's a version of the town that doesn't show up in the festival brochure, and it's worth knowing about even if you never buy a ticket.
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