35th Annual Chalk It Up! Chalk Art & Music Festival
Labor Day Weekend: Saturday, August 30 through Monday, September 1, 2025, from 10 am to 6 pm, at Fremont Park in Midtown Sacramento. Admission is FREE!
The Chalk It Up! Chalk Art & Music Festival is a three-day celebration of local artists and the arts community — one of the last of the free, family-friendly festivals in Midtown Sacramento.
Since 1991, we have hosted a safe and clean festival at Fremont Park at 16th & Q Streets in Midtown Sacramento where the community can listen to live local musicians, patronize local craft, maker, and food vendors in the marketplace, and watch local artists turn the sidewalks around Fremont Park into colorful works of art. This is part performance art, as the artists create the work during the festival. Community members come from throughout the greater Sacramento Valley region several times over the 3-day weekend to watch the art work come to life. Kids of all ages are inspired after a walk around the outside of the park to admire the work of these professional artists, so we supply buckets of sidewalk chalk for folks to use to experiment on the interior walkways of the park.
The Chalk It Up Festival is a Sacramento tradition and a gift to the community. Thanks to the help and partnership of our generous sponsors, donors, and volunteers, we’ve kept it 100 percent free to the public for 35 years!
CHALK ART
Street painting, using chalk as the medium, is an Italian tradition that is believed to have begun during the 16th century. It is called “Madonnari” because of their practice of reproducing the image of the Madonna (Our Lady). The early Italian street painters were travelers who would arrive in small towns and villages for Catholic religious festivals and transform the streets and public squares into temporary galleries for their works of art. The Chalk It Up Festival honors this tradition and celebrates the transient beauty of this medium.
John C. Fremont Park is located at 1515 Q Street in Downtown Sacramento. This 2.50 acre park includes an Adventure Playground, walkways, lots of beautiful legacy trees providing tongs of shade, and city WiFi. For the Chalk It Up! Chalk Art & Music Festival we bring in the following amenities:
- Portable Restrooms and Handwashing Stations
- “Water Monsters” with free filtered, chilled water for water bottle refills
- Picnic area with chairs and tables
- Food trucks and stationary food vendors
- Craft vendors and artists
- Bike Parking
- 21 & Over tent serving local brews, wine, and cider
- Chalk It Up Stage with 3-days of live local music
ACCESSIBILITY
Fremont Park is public park in Midtown Sacramento and the full block, including all the surrounding sidewalks, are reserved during the Chalk It Up Festival. Most activities take place on its expansive grassy areas. The park is designed with concrete sidewalks to help those using mobility devices to reach the food and craft vendors. However, it’s important to note that the picnic area, beer garden, chalk art, and stage are all located on natural turf or grassy areas. Visitors using mobility devices should be prepared for these uneven surfaces.
