Meals, artwork, enjoyable opened fifteenth annual Sacramento Banana Festival

This weekend, Sacramento is getting its fill of potassium, and then some.

The 15th annual Sacramento Banana Festival was underway at William Land Regional Park on Saturday morning, with bunches and bunches of banana-themed activities, art vendors and food sellers centered around the diverse communities that have historically cultivated bananas and plantains.

Community members are invited to participate in various interactive activities, performances and contests throughout the weekend while emcee Russell Cummings entertains the banana costume-clad crowd.

The theme of this year’s festival — which doubles as the largest fundraiser of the year for Sacramento’s Sojourner Truth African Heritage Museum — is reggae, and nods to the Caribbean music genre were present throughout the event.

The Banana Festival continues Sunday from 10 a.m. through 5:30 p.m. Admission tickets are available at the door for $15 per person. Children ages 5 and under may enter for free, but require a reserved ticket.

Funding generations of historical education

Shonna McDaniels, founder and executive director of the Sojourner Truth African Heritage Museum, has run the Banana Festival for 15 years on behalf of her institution.

The Sojourner Truth museum — which features exhibits on early and modern Black history in Sacramento and the U.S. and operates programs for community youth — runs on razor-thin margins every year, McDaniels said. Ahead of the 2025 Banana Festival, McDaniels told The Bee she was concerned the museum would have to shut down if turnout was not what she anticipated.

For the 15th iteration of the festival, McDaniels said she was hoping for about 12,000 attendees to earn sufficient funding for her programs.

With Banana Festival-obtained funds and community grants, the Sojourner Truth museum can offer experiences like its youth docent program, which trains Sacramento-area teens to run tours in the museum’s exhibitions, and a slew of art-based youth development groups that mentor kids and teens in the capital region through art therapy programs.

“We’re hoping that before the day is over that we can pack this park,” McDaniels said. “If we can pack this park, we can do good, I’m hoping until the end of the year.”

Though the Banana Festival has been around for 15 years, McDaniels has been hosting an annual fundraising event for 25 years. The event formerly known as the SoJo Fine Arts Festival struggled financially throughout the 10 years it was held, so McDaniels and her team decided to switch it up and develop a food festival.

The banana theming came about more than a decade ago as a symbol of cultural unity and diversity across global communities, McDaniels said.

“We are about celebrating humanity, and that’s what diversity does (and) what the banana does,” she said.

This park is bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S

William Land Regional Park was packed with hungry Banana Festival-goers early in the morning, and activities kicked off alongside their arrival.

A breakfast-time banana-eating contest hosted by an energetic Cummings managed to get a group of excited children to chow down on the healthful fruit, with the winner having consumed five whole bananas in only two minutes.

Later, a Zumba group got the crowd moving with a handful of cardio exercises set to global tunes. Bollywood, Latin music, Afrobeats and Caribbean music were the backdrop for neon-clad Zumba dancers.

“(Zumba) is always fun because it’s interactive,” Cummings said. “A lot of the things that are interactive are my favorite (parts of the festival).”

Around the rest of the park, vendors sold a variety of artwork and other items, and community outreach groups shared their resources with guests. A handful of live artists created large banana-themed paintings while a giant paint-by-numbers canvas invited festival attendees of all ages to contribute to some colorful artwork.

“This event is really important, and I think artists bringing their art and their creative feel to this brings it out more,” said artist Jermaine “JCrux” Tilson, a longtime live artist at the Banana Festival who was hand-painting an abstract piece of a man with an Afro surrounded by bananas on Saturday.

“For the Black community, I think (the Banana Festival is) one of those events that is always packed, and it’s always where you see a lot of the Black community come together and support each other,” he said. “And it’s still going, that’s amazing that it’s still going (after 15 years).”

The festival’s younger attendees are treated to a large kids zone, with bounce houses, a rock climbing wall and bungee trampoline activities available. Craft areas, a small playground and shaded seating areas are also set up for families in the kids area.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a banana festival without food. Dozens of food vendors are serving sweet and savory dishes, with and without the festival’s namesake ingredient. Classic banana delicacies like pudding, milkshakes and coffee drinks are available, as well as unique takes on cotton candy, cheesecake wontons and lemonade.

Banana Pudding Krazy had multiple flavors of banana pudding for sale, from an original Nilla cookie variant to red velvet and peanut butter-Oreo options.

A multicultural array of cuisines offered a respite from banana flavors, including Southern barbecue, fried catfish, Jamaican and Caribbean food, Mexican and Filipino options, as well as hot dogs and burgers.

Muz Knuckles BBQ served classic soul food and barbecue items with fusion twists. Plates could include traditional melt-off-the-bone oxtail, pulled pork, brisket and candied pork belly alongside sweet barbecue baked beans, ube cornbread and rich, earthy jalapeño mac and cheese.

On Sunday, the festival will continue with its community interactivity. An Afrobeats dance troupe will kick off the morning with a group dance, before banana-costumed dogs compete in a pageant. If you missed your chance to participate on Saturday, another banana eating contest is slated for noon Sunday.

Reggae artists Ras Matthew, Soul Fyah in Da Mix and Sky Eyes will also take the stage throughout the festival’s second day.

Cummings said he believes events like the Banana Festival are crucial to fostering community around the Sacramento area.

“There’s a lot of stuff going on in the community, so tap in,” he said. “There’s so much art … activism and community involvement going on, you kind of just have to get in tune and come outside and be a part of it.”

This story was initially revealed August 15, 2026 at 3:07 PM.