2026 Festival Information

The Anchorage Folk Festival—a celebration of Alaska’s folk music and culture

For eleven days at the end of January, the Anchorage Folk Festival provides a dazzling array of concerts, music-related workshops by local and guest artists, and more, both in Anchorage and in nearby venues. Nearly all of the festival’s offerings are free events open to the public.

The festival takes two main forms:

• two weekends of folk music and culture celebrated and experienced in over 120 live performance sets and nearly 50 workshops at the University of Alaska Anchorage’s Wendy Williams Auditorium and in the adjacent Professional Studies Building, all of it free
• Folk Week: a variety of over 40 free live-music gigs and jams at 10 venues in and around Anchorage by local musicians—an opportunity to experience and celebrate our abundant musical talent in some of our city’s pubs and restaurants, starting Sunday January 25

Three special events add to the fun. First, the night of the start of the festival, a special Parlor in the Round event brings together three songwriters for an audience-directed night of improvisation, collaboration, and storytelling. On Saturday the 24th, two of our Guest Artists—local favorites Wiley Post and Henhouse Prowlers—present a fundraiser concert at Odd Man Rush Brewing in Eagle River. The third, held a week later in Spenard on Thursday January 29 at the end of Folk Week, is the Barn Dance fundraiser, a not-to-be-missed rollicking romp of an evening full of called square dancing to fantastic live music from guest artists the Faux Paws. An additional fundraiser concert benefiting the Anchorage Folk Festival will be held at 49th State Brewing, bringing together Hannah Read and the Horsenecks.

And on the festival’s two Sundays, our Guest Artists Henhouse Prowlers and the Faux Paws will host workshops on their musical styles, instruments, and cultural heritage. The Faux Paws will close the festival that night with a concert on the Wendy’s Main Stage after our last local acts—an event you do not want to pass up and that will be sure to have you dancing.

There are also two Raffle drawings (one each Sunday night), our Silent Auction, and our Annual Members’ Meeting, Instrument Swap, and Alaska’s only Banjo Contest.

Come check out as much of this abundant folk celebration as you like, as our guest!