The past few years have been quite a journey for the Dollar Bank Three Rivers Arts Festival. After decades spent in Point State Park, the annual event moved into Downtown’s Cultural District in 2022, with closed-down streets serving as its venue. Then, in 2025, a shorter and smaller festival moved into the Strip District during the construction of the new civic space, Arts Landing.
Now, Arts Landing is complete and the Three Rivers Arts Festival will move into its new long-term home with the 2026 festival. It will be held over two weekends, from June 5 to 7 and June 11 to 14 in the four-acre space in the Cultural District of Downtown Pittsburgh.
“We were so grateful to the neighborhood of the Strip District and the Buncher Foundation for giving us a temporary home, but to be able to bring it back Downtown and to be able to put it in Arts Landing is really, really exciting,” said Brooke Horejsi, chief programming and engagement officer for the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust.
The Three Rivers Arts Festival was founded in 1960 by the Women’s Committee of the Carnegie Museum of Art and held in Point State Park.
The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust began producing the festival in 2009.
Traditionally, the event has lasted between four and 10 days. The Strip District move shortened last year’s event to four days, but it will span seven non-consecutive days over two weekends this year.
Horejsi said the festival’s length in the future will be dependent on attendance.
“We want to make sure it’s sustainable for the long term. Part of sustainability is making decisions based on how many people show up and how much it costs us to run the festival,” she said.
She added that Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were by far the least-popular days of the Arts Festival in previous years.
“If the data supports an expansion in, say, 2027, that would be great. But if it doesn’t, then we’ll look at it after 2027 and make a decision based on the 2027 data,” Horejsi said.
This year’s festival will feature an impressive lineup of performers, from alt-rockers the Spin Doctors on opening night to “One Of Us” singer Joan Osborne on closing night. But there are many other favorites in between, including hip-hop group The Pharcyde and pop group Trousdale.
Horejsi is looking forward to the June 13 concert by Delfeayo Marsalis and The Uptown Jazz Orchestra.
“You couldn’t get a better festival fit,” she said. “High energy, Delfeayo is jazz royalty here in the United States.”
But she also wanted to highlight the many local musicians who will be performing throughout the festival. She said the event’s planners comb through many applications by musicians, and it’s great to see these smaller acts perform in front of crowds of thousands.
“It’s always really exciting to support them and see them as they get up onto that big festival stage,” she said.
The true hallmark of the Three Rivers Arts Festival is the artist market, where makers in various mediums set up their creations for sale. Last year’s artist market contained about 100 different artists; this year, Horejsi said that there will be between 300 and 400.
“They won’t be the same between the two weekends,” Horejsi said. “There will be a handful of them who do both weekends, but there will be a changeover.”
Both David Scribner, a ceramics artist and owner of Dragonfly Studio from Erie, Pa., and Heather Johnston, a printmaker and owner of Heather Keely Art, from Friendship, are new to the artist market this year.
“I’m really excited for it and grateful for the opportunity,” Scribner said.
He just struck out with his ceramic art last year, and he’s the recipient of one of the Arts Festival’s Emerging Artist Scholarships.
Despite not living in Pittsburgh, Scribner has attended the festival before.
“When it was down at the Point, I was there a few years ago for the first time. My son went to school at Duquesne, so we started going down to Pittsburgh more. … I was quite impressed. I really liked it,” he said.
He moved into art full-time last year after a long career at a corporate job.
“As soon as I made this transition, I decided I should apply and see if I could get in. (Arts Landing) looks like a great venue.”
Johnston’s prints come in many sizes — she said that she wants to keep art accessible for everyone.
She will be at the market on the first weekend of the festival, while Scribner will be there the second weekend.
Tiara Emery of West Mifflin will be bringing prints and stickers of her digital art to the festival, also as an Emerging Artist. She volunteered at last year’s Arts Festival and decided to dive in this time.
“With my digital art, I try to create bold and expressive pieces. They lean toward painting and watercolor style, to kind of bridge the gap between both those mediums,” Emery said.
Her art often focuses on celebrating the relationship people have with their hair.
“Creating it in often unexpected ways — I just did a series where the various hairstyles were flowers or plants,” she said. “I’ve transformed hair into water.”
Horejsi pointed out that the different offerings between the two weekends should entice attendees to come down twice. That includes two unique performances that she is looking forward to.
The first one she mentioned was the multi-disciplinary performance group Squonk Opera, a Pittsburgh fixture since the mid-1990s. They will debut a new show titled “Joy Machine.”
“If you don’t know Squonk — if you’ve never experienced one of their shows — ‘Joy Machine’ is the perfect title and description for what they do,” Horejsi said.
The second weekend will feature the high-flying vertical antics of Bandaloop, an internationally renowned group of vertical dance performers.
“They perform really high up in all sorts of places. They jump off every kind of structure you can imagine, whether those are skyscrapers or mountains or bridges,” Horejsi said.
Bandaloop has performed all over the world, but this will be their first time performing in Pittsburgh. They can be seen in scheduled performances on June 12 and 13.
Horejsi said the planning process has been bolstered by the buzz of bringing an important cultural tradition into a long-term home in the Cultural District.
“What a great setting for people to be in,” she said. “They’ll be able to sit on the lawn and bring blankets and do picnics and all that. It’s going to be really, really lovely.”
To learn more about the full schedule and lineup for the Three Rivers Arts Festival, visit TRAF.trustarts.org.