At 6:30 on the evening of Friday, September 11, Main Street fills with kids on decorated bikes and wagons, trailing behind a banner from Georgetown Community Hospital. This is the Colt & Filly Parade, the traditional kickoff to the weekend everyone in town still calls Festival of the Horse. Except that isn't its name anymore. The official title, printed on every 2026 flyer and city calendar entry, is Best of the Bluegrass, Festival of the Horse, a mouthful that used to just be the second half.
The rename matters more than it sounds like it should. Pull up the actual Saturday schedule for this, the festival's 45th year, and count how many of the listed acts and activities involve an actual horse. You get to two: the Colt & Filly Parade on Friday night and the Grand Parade of Horses on Saturday at 5 p.m. Everything else on the program, roughly a dozen separate bookings, is regional bands, a farmers market, a cornhole tournament, balloon art, and a library bookmobile. The horse is still the mascot. It stopped being most of the itinerary years ago.
What Friday Actually Looks Like
Vendors and the Fox Creek Amusements rides open around 4 p.m. on Friday, and the evening builds from there. Hannah Wheeler & The Heartaches take the early slot from 5 to 6, the Fireman's Chili Cookoff runs in the same window, and the Colt & Filly Parade steps off at 6:30. Paint Creek follows from 7:30 to 8:30, and Tony & The Tan Lines close the night from 9 to 10:30. If your plan is to walk down, eat, and leave before the crowd peaks, the window between the chili cookoff and the 7:30 band change is the quietest stretch of the whole weekend.
Saturday Is the Day Main Street Stops Being a Through-Street
Saturday is where the festival earns its size. The day starts early, away from Main Street entirely, and only migrates downtown as the morning goes on.
| Time | What's Happening | Where |
|---|---|---|
| 9:00 a.m. | Cornhole Tournament | Brooking Park |
| 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. | Scott County Farmers Market | Museum Parking Lot |
| 11:00 a.m. | Vendors and amusement rides open | Main Street |
| 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. | Scott County Public Library Bookmobile | Main Street |
| 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. | SINGO | Country Boy Music Stage |
| 11:30 a.m. | Harrison County Boot Stompers | Corner of Main & Hamilton |
| 12:00 to 3:00 p.m. | Ezra Papp Entertainment | Main Street |
| 12:00 to 2:00 p.m. | Party Animal Balloons | Main Street |
| 1:00 to 2:00 p.m. | The Mannequins | Main Street |
| 2:30 to 3:30 p.m. | Nic Cassetta | Main Street |
| 3:00 p.m. | Booiaka Showcase | Corner of Main & Hamilton |
| 5:00 p.m. | Grand Parade of Horses | Main Street |
The cornhole tournament starting at Brooking Park rather than downtown is a small detail, but it's the kind of thing that saves you a wasted trip if you assumed everything happens on Main. Same with the farmers market relocating to the Museum Parking Lot instead of its usual Saturday spot. If you're a regular at the market and just show up at the pavilion out of habit, you'll be in the wrong place until the festival wraps.
The Part That's Actually About Horses
Sunday shifts tone entirely. The morning starts with a Blessing of the Animals at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church on South Broadway, and the Pet Parade hosted by the Scott County Humane Society follows at 2 p.m., running from the church down Main Street to South Mulberry. Leashed dogs, cats, and other pets are welcome to join, and the humane society has asked participants to confirm ahead of time by email so they know roughly how many animals to expect on the route.
Between the Friday parade of kids on bikes, the Saturday parade of actual horses, and the Sunday parade of pets, the festival technically delivers three separate processions down the same stretch of pavement. Only one of the three requires a horse.
The Week You Didn't Know You Were Planning Around
Treating September 11 through 13 as an isolated weekend undersells how much is actually stacked into the surrounding stretch. If you live in Georgetown, the more useful mental model is a two-week window rather than a single weekend:
- September 5: Harvest Moon Jubilee, a separate fall event on the city's calendar the weekend before the main festival
- September 10 to 12: Ward Hall, the Greek Revival mansion on Frankfort Road, opens for historic home tours from 1 to 6 p.m., timed to overlap with the festival's opening days
- September 12 to 13: Evans Orchard's Apple Festival runs the same weekend as the Grand Parade of Horses, giving families a second, quieter option if downtown gets crowded
- September 18: Chinkapin Brewing's Octoberfest, at 149 East Main Street, picks up the following Friday once the festival tents have come down
None of these are footnotes to the main event. They're independently ticketed or independently free, and they were scheduled by different organizers who clearly built around each other rather than around a single anchor date. For a Georgetown resident, that means the actual disruption to a normal week runs closer to ten days than three.
Where to Land When Main Street Is Full
Country Boy Brewing's Georgetown taproom hosts the SINGO set on Saturday, which makes it a reasonable home base if you want a seat and a beer between parade times rather than standing on the curb all day. Chinkapin Brewing, a block or so down at 149 East Main, is worth remembering for the following weekend too, since its own Octoberfest gives you a second reason to be downtown once the festival crowds have cleared out.
The festival itself is centered on 100 East Main Street, and every road closure, stage placement, and vendor line radiates out from that address. If you're trying to get anywhere on the east end of downtown on either Friday evening or Saturday afternoon, plan for Main to be effectively unusable as a through-route and route around it rather than through it.
Forty-five years in, Georgetown's biggest annual gathering has quietly become less about the animal in its name and more about the density of things happening in one place at one time. That's not a complaint. It's just a more accurate way to plan the week, whether you're new to town or you've been walking down for the chili cookoff since before the name changed.
If you're settling into Georgetown and want a longer view of what the town's calendar looks like the other eleven months of the year, or you're weighing whether this part of Scott County fits what you're looking for in a home, I'm happy to talk through it. Trey McCallie works Georgetown and the rest of Central Kentucky year-round, festival season included. Let's Connect.
