Cannifest 2026 Moves to Arcata Ball Park After Blue Lake Plans Fall Through

Cannifest is heading to Arcata Ball Park for its 2026 edition after a months-long effort to bring the cannabis pride festival back to Blue Lake collapsed under a tangle of scheduling conflicts and what organizer Stephen Gieder called deliberate municipal obstruction.

Gieder, who runs Cannifest through his company Humboldt Green Events, LLC, announced the two-day, all-ages event will take place Sept. 12–13 at Arcata Ball Park. The shift ends an ambitious push to plant the festival inside Blue Lake city limits, where Gieder had envisioned a main stage inside Dell'Arte International's facilities flanked by two outdoor stages, with attendance capped at roughly 1,500 people at any given time.

"The folks in charge [at the city] are gonna make it a nightmare for us," Gieder said. "I wouldn't want to do something in the town at this point."

Blue Lake City Manager Jennie Short pointed to a scheduling conflict with the Mad River Enduro event as the central complication, and disputed Gieder's characterization of the process. "I have inquired on alternative dates for his event [Cannifest] and have not received a response," Short said. "He was invited to set up a meeting with the City Planner to discuss the details. To date he has not indicated that he would like to do so."

The plan had briefly generated real momentum. Dell'Arte International, the theater company and fine arts school that anchors Blue Lake's cultural identity, had sought to host Cannifest as a fundraiser at a moment of acute financial pressure. Board chair Artemis Pebdani told a Blue Lake council meeting, "Dell'Arte has not been doing well, man. We're hanging by the thinnest thread." Despite that urgency, Pebdani acknowledged early confusion on the board over what Dell'Arte's event permit covered, and emphasized that any deal needed to align with the nonprofit's mission and proceed with the city's cooperation.

That cooperation never fully materialized. City staff warned Gieder the proposal would never get approved. Council members criticized him for communication failures, even as the council itself appeared largely receptive during its meeting on the matter. Residents had already flooded social media with concern after Cannifest's Instagram post announced a three-day Blue Lake festival for Sept. 11–13 without mentioning that the 2026 event would carry no cannabis sales, no licensed distribution, and no on-site consumption areas. Blue Lake maintains a strict prohibition on commercial cannabis activity, a detail the post omitted entirely. Gieder said an overzealous state investigator damaged vendor relationships at last year's Halvorsen Park edition in Eureka, and that he no longer considers on-site consumption an essential part of the festival.

Cannifest, which Gieder describes as "a cannabis pride festival" featuring vendor booths, farmers displaying their crops, educational talks, and music, has been running for roughly a decade. The 2024 edition was held at Halvorsen Park in Eureka as an all-ages event. For 2026, Gieder had also explored using the Blue Lake Casino and Hotel as a backup venue, with the casino potentially providing parking and shuttle service to the festival grounds, though nothing on that front was finalized before the Arcata Ball Park announcement was made.

Pebdani said she remains optimistic about the longer arc even as the 2026 Blue Lake plan dissolved. "If nothing else, this process opened the door for real conversations about hosting larger events like this in Blue Lake, and that feels like progress," she said. "Cannifest 2027, anyone?"

Vendor and sponsor applications for the Arcata Ball Park event are already open on the Cannifest website, which also promotes the HEADSTASH BOWL: HARVEST 2026 competition alongside the festival. Admission prices are expected to be reduced from prior years to broaden access.