New Hope PA Fall Events Calendar Beyond Festival Weekend
The New Hope-Solebury High School parking lot is full of tents this weekend, both days of it, for the 32nd year of the New Hope Arts and Crafts Festival. A free shuttle connects the grounds to South Main Street, and the food lineup includes lobster rolls from Coastal Flavors and Thai sticky rice from Aroi Mango.
The festival is one part of a larger fall arts season. At the New Hope Arts gallery on Stockton Avenue, a juried exhibition has been on view since August 29, and a full run of October programs follows it.
The 32nd Annual New Hope Arts and Crafts Festival runs Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., rain or shine, with more than 160 juried fine artists and craftsmen showing work across media: oil paintings, watercolors, sculpture, ceramics, wearable art, glass, photography. Admission is a five dollar donation. The festival grounds sit at the high school lot, close enough to downtown that the Chamber runs a complimentary shuttle bus to South Main Street near Bucks County Playhouse, so a festival visit and a downtown stroll are the same trip if you plan it that way.
Michael Sklar, president of the Greater New Hope Chamber of Commerce, told WMMR when the festival's return was announced this year:
"New Hope Arts & Crafts Festival really represents what makes New Hope special."
The festival anchors the season, and New Hope Arts adds a second stop the same weekend.
As the Bucks County Herald reported, New Hope Arts, the borough's contemporary art nonprofit at 2 Stockton Avenue, is currently showing "Liberty and Its Shadows: Reflecting on America at 250," on view through October 4. It's a juried exhibition of 40 regional contemporary artists, and it is on view throughout festival weekend.
The show pairs that juried work with "Men Without Shoes," a student-led multimedia project from the Black Student Union at Foundation Academies. The documentary component already received the Young People's Visionary Award at the 15th Annual People's Film Festival and is currently touring the region. New Hope Arts hosted a screening and discussion with the student scholars on September 10, several weeks before the exhibition's October 4 closing date.
The exhibition reflects on the country's 250th anniversary through the work of 40 regional artists. It pairs naturally with a festival day built around craft and browsing, since both are open in New Hope this weekend, the gallery at 2 Stockton Avenue.
The gallery doesn't pause once the current exhibition comes down. Its own calendar lists five separate public programs landing in the first three and a half weeks of October alone:
That's a concert, a dance social, a solo exhibition, a film and dance program, and a cabaret night, stacked inside roughly 25 days. The gallery's calendar then lists "Works in Wood 2026," opening November 7 and running through December 13, after the October programs.
Taken together, the calendar moves from a juried group show to a solo pop-up to music, dance, film, and cabaret nights, giving the gallery five distinct public programs in under a month.
Ghost Tours of New Hope pick back up every September and October, meeting at the corner of Ferry and Main Streets at 7:45 p.m. for a lantern-led walk through the borough's history. It is a history-focused counterpart to the gallery's contemporary programming, running through the same weeks.
Bucks County Playhouse is also mid-season, and this particular season carries more weight than usual. The 2026 lineup, which opened in February with the world premiere of "Starstruck" and has already run "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" and "South Pacific" earlier in the year, marks the final season for Producing Director Alexander Fraser, Executive Producer Robyn Goodman, and Producer Josh Fiedler. The two productions still ahead this year, "Rent" and "Holiday Inn: The New Irving Berlin Musical," will close out not just the 2026 calendar but this particular producing team's run at the historic South Main Street stage, the same building Grace Kelly and Robert Redford once worked from. Those final two productions are the last of the season this team programmed.
For everything new stacking into October, the Annual Christmas Tree Lighting remains a longstanding fixture in the borough: now in its fifth decade, it is set for November 29 at 5 p.m. in the heart of town, hosted by the Greater New Hope Chamber of Commerce and the Logan Inn. It follows the gallery, Playhouse, and ghost tour programming that fills the weeks before it.
The festival wraps up Sunday afternoon, and the gallery exhibition stays up for another week, closing October 4. What follows is a run of gallery programs, Playhouse productions, and evening ghost tours that carries the season toward the tree lighting.
If New Hope's arts calendar has you thinking about how close you'd like to be to Stockton Avenue, Main Street, and the Playhouse, Dana Lansing is glad to talk it through.
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