If you live in 37206, you already know the drill. The first weekend of August, Five Points closes to cars, the sidewalks fill with people in red felt costumes, and the whole neighborhood turns into a two-day open house for itself. What you may not have clocked yet is how much of the walking route between stages has changed since last August.
The 2026 Tomato Art Fest takes place Friday, August 7 and Saturday, August 8 in Historic East Nashville's Five Points, free to attend and costume-encouraged. The fest itself is a constant. The blocks around it are not. A cluster of new and relocated businesses has landed inside a few minutes' walk of the main stage in the last twelve months, and the practical effect is that your familiar Saturday loop through Woodland, Clearwater, and Greenwood now has three or four stops it did not have in 2025.
The Weekend, In Hours
Save yourself a phone check on the way out the door.
- Friday, August 7, 5:00 to 10:00 p.m. Opening night at Five Points. The 37206 Main Stage lineup, presented by Busch Light, runs Tobacco Road, Jarren Blair, Girl Tones, and The Foxies.
- Saturday, August 8, 9:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. The full run. Saturday's Main Stage brings Threegon, Massie99, Wild Bill & The Bruisers, Raygun, JT Loux, Waxed, and Moga Family Band, with the 11th St. Stage presented by Publix hosting The FBR, Eva Cassel, Lonesome Joy, Abbdavv, Gremlins, Chrysalis, and the Battle of the Vine winner.
- The Push, Pull & Wear Parade kicks off tomato weekend with floats and costumes competing across Best Overall, Best Use of Tomatoes, Festival Spirit, Best Pushed, Best Pulled, and Best Wearable.
The 23rd anniversary of the Tomato Art Fest is one of the most popular annual happenings in Nashville, and the crowd math has caught up with the reputation. Organizers estimated 65,000 people in 2022, and current festival coverage now puts the two-day total at north of that. Plan accordingly.
The Pins That Weren't Here Last August
Here is the thesis, stated plainly: if you did the Tomato Art Fest loop last year, do it again this year and you'll cross four newly opened or relocated addresses that changed the character of the surrounding blocks. None of them are chain replacements of what was there before. All of them are within a comfortable walk of the main stage.
Good People Brewing at the McGavock House. East Nashville's historic McGavock House building is slated to offer a craft beer bar from Birmingham-based Good People Brewing Company. The building itself is the story. A regional brewery choosing a preserved 19th-century house over a warehouse box is the kind of adaptive reuse East Nashville has been arguing for at community meetings for a decade. If the taps are pouring by festival weekend, expect a queue.
The Greenwood, next to Schulman's. The Greenwood at 2105 Greenwood Ave., a Palm Springs-inspired bar and restaurant from Icon Entertainment & Hospitality, could open by mid-summer in East Nashville next to Schulman's, with three spaces: a 2,700-square-foot rooftop, sunken lounge areas, and a dining room. A 2,700-square-foot rooftop is a genuinely new format for this stretch of Greenwood, which has been ground-floor bars and small patios for years. Post-parade drink plans just got a vertical option.
Crazy Gnome's new taproom, plus pizza. Crazy Gnome recently relocated its East Nashville taproom and partnered with FAB Pizza to offer pizza, wings, and other eats Friday through Sunday. If your prior mental map had Crazy Gnome pegged to its old Main Street footprint, update it. The relocation matters because the weekend food partnership solves the old problem of drinking somewhere with no kitchen and having to bail for dinner.
Black Dynasty Secret Ramen House, brick-and-mortar. Black Dynasty Secret Ramen House has transitioned from pop-up favorite to brick-and-mortar location in East Nashville, which means the ramen you used to have to chase across Instagram now has a permanent address you can walk to after a set on 11th.
Two smaller but worth-noting additions round out the map. East Nashville's newest ice cream shop in the Eastwood Village shops offers soft serve with an array of toppings from Lucky Charms marshmallows to black raspberry caps, which is the answer to a very specific 3:00 p.m. Saturday problem in August. And a newly opened teahouse in East Nashville has a pottery studio inside, handmade pottery for sale, and is open Tuesday through Sunday with morning and evening hours. If the crowd density at Five Points is doing you in, that is the reset button.
Add QBOP, an open-air East Nashville gathering spot that recently opened with heaps of new restaurants and food trucks, and you have your alt-route from the main stage worked out.
Five Points on a Saturday, Practically Speaking
You've been to enough of these to have your own routine, but a few things are worth naming this year specifically.
Heat is the actual variable. August in Nashville is hot and humid, hydration is non-negotiable for a full day at an outdoor festival, and Five Points is an outdoor street festival with limited shade. The stretch of Woodland between Main Stage and 11th has the least tree cover. If you're doing a full day, plan indoor stops in the loop, not as an afterthought.
Parking behaves like it always has, but the buffer is smaller. Five Points street parking fills fast on festival weekends, the surrounding residential streets turn over slowly once people are settled in, and arriving before 10 a.m. on Saturday is the practical cutoff. If you live inside the walk-shed, this is the year to leave the car. If you live in Inglewood or Rosebank, biking in from the greenway spurs is faster than driving Gallatin.
Dogs are welcome, but pace them. Tomato Art Fest is explicitly dog-friendly and well-behaved leashed dogs are welcome throughout. Pavement temperature is the thing people forget. A quick hand test on the asphalt at 2:00 p.m. will tell you whether your dog should be there at 2:00 p.m.
The fest is free. A few things are not. The two-day festival and concert are free to attend and welcoming to all, and there are a few official ticketed festival events that are optional. The parade itself has a participation fee for entering a float, not for watching one.
Where Locals Actually Start the Day
The morning-of question is always coffee, and East Nashville's answer hasn't changed even as everything else has. East Nashville has several of the best coffee shops in the city including Barista Parlor and The Horn. Both get busy by 9:00 a.m. on Saturday. Both are worth the wait. If you're bringing out-of-town family who insist on staying downtown and rideshare-ing over, tell them 8:30 or nothing.
For lunch, the new-openings map does the work for you. Black Dynasty for ramen if the weather cooperates with hot broth, which in Nashville August it will not, so probably the soft-serve shop in Eastwood Village and a proper dinner at Crazy Gnome and FAB Pizza after the last Main Stage set. Save The Greenwood for late, when the rooftop is doing what rooftops are supposed to do.
The Larger Point
Every year at Tomato Art Fest, someone at a booth asks whether East Nashville has changed too much. The honest answer this August is that the neighborhood is still doing the same thing it has always done, which is turning over its ground-floor tenancies while keeping the streetscape recognizable. The McGavock House becoming a taproom instead of another teardown is exactly the pattern that made Five Points what it is. So is a Palm Springs rooftop concept choosing Greenwood over the Gulch. So is a ramen pop-up finding a permanent lease inside walking distance of a two-day festival that celebrates a vegetable. The pins are new. The map is the same map.
Wear red. Drink water. Say hi to your neighbors. The fest is Friday and Saturday.
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