If you live in Comox, you already know the BC Day long weekend is the busiest stretch of the summer. What you may not have thought about is that 2026 is the year the town leaned into it fully. The Filberg Festival and Comox Nautical Days are running back-to-back at two venues you can walk between, and the smart move this year is to plan the weekend as one event, not two.
The thesis, before you keep scrolling
Most write-ups treat Filberg and Nautical Days as separate items on a summer calendar. Locals who have lived through a few of these long weekends know that is not how the weekend actually behaves. Filberg opens Friday morning at the top of the hill. Nautical Days opens Saturday down at the harbour. The overlap on Saturday and Sunday is the point. The Town of Comox has started marketing it as "Festival Weekend" for exactly that reason, promoting the pair together as a single stretch of music, art, and family programming across the August long weekend.
Once you see it that way, everything about how you plan the weekend changes: which day you buy Filberg tickets for, when you eat, where you park, which event you bring visiting family to first.
Filberg Festival: Friday July 31 to Sunday August 2
The Filberg Festival runs at Filberg Heritage Lodge and Park at 61 Filberg Road. Hours are 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday. The festival is ticketed, and early bird pricing has been available since spring.
What you are paying for, specifically:
- Over 140 juried artisans working in metalwork, pottery, woodcraft, jewelry, glass, textiles, and specialty foods. Every vendor is selected through a jury process, which is why the market has a different feel from a standard craft fair.
- Two music stages with a mix of local performers and touring Canadian acts.
- The Summer Kitchen, the festival's on-site meal setup, with seating angled toward Comox Harbour and the Beaufort Range.
- A site-wide beverage licence covering Vancouver Island beer, wine, and cider, so you are not tied to one garden.
- The Enchanted Forest kids' zone with face painting, storytelling, and crafts, if you are bringing children.
Your ticket also functions as a small preservation donation. The Filberg Heritage Lodge & Park Association uses proceeds to maintain the heritage buildings and gardens, which the festival takes over each summer on the traditional territory of the K'ómoks First Nation.
If you have never done Filberg on a Friday, that is the day to prioritize. Friday is quieter than Saturday, the artisans are freshly stocked, and the shade from the park's older trees does most of the work of keeping the site comfortable in an afternoon heat.
Comox Nautical Days: Saturday August 1 to Monday August 3
Nautical Days runs at Comox Marina Park and it is free. This is the piece that changes the weekend math. You can bring everyone in your household to Nautical Days without buying anything, and then decide whether Filberg is a one-person or whole-family purchase.
The programming the Town of Comox has confirmed for 2026 includes the BC Day Parade, the Comox Nautical Days Vintage Car Show, more than 100 craft booths, food trucks, kids' rides and games, the Rotary Splash Park and playground, and the VI Society for Adaptive Snow Sports Bistro Garden for adults. Monday night closes with the Quality Foods Festival of Lights Fireworks over the harbour.
The fireworks are the single busiest event of the weekend in Comox. If you have relatives coming into town, this is the night they will remember, and it is the night the marina parking fills earliest.
The quick schedule
| Day | Filberg (61 Filberg Rd) | Nautical Days (Comox Marina Park) |
|---|---|---|
| Fri Jul 31 | 10 a.m.–8 p.m. | — |
| Sat Aug 1 | 10 a.m.–8 p.m. | Open, parade day |
| Sun Aug 2 | 10 a.m.–6 p.m. | Open |
| Mon Aug 3 | — | Open, fireworks in evening |
Saturday and Sunday are the days both sites are live. That is where the "one weekend, two venues" logic actually gets tested.
The walking-radius logic
Filberg Park and Comox Marina Park sit within a comfortable walk of each other along Comox Avenue. Locals who have done this before know the move is to park once, ideally somewhere between Downtown Comox and the marina, and use foot traffic to shuttle between the two events for the middle of the day. The residential streets closest to Filberg get tight quickly on Saturday morning, and the marina lot fills by mid-afternoon on parade day. Anywhere along the downtown core splits the difference and keeps you out of both bottlenecks.
The other reason walking is the right call: you are going to eat at both sites. Filberg has the Summer Kitchen and specialty food vendors on the artisan side. Nautical Days has food trucks scattered across the marina. Trying to move a car between the two mid-day is the version of this weekend that ends in frustration. Trying to move your feet is the version that works.
If you only have one afternoon
Not everyone has three clear days. Two clean choices, depending on what you are actually after:
You want the shopping and the music. Go to Filberg on Friday. It is the least crowded day, the artisans have full inventory, and you can eat at the Summer Kitchen without a long wait. Skip Nautical Days entirely and you will still feel like you did the weekend.
You have kids, or visiting family, and you want the classic Comox summer experience. Go to Nautical Days on Saturday for the parade, come back Monday evening for the fireworks. Both are free, both are outdoors, and both are what people picture when they picture summer here.
You have one Saturday. Filberg in the morning when the artisan market is fresh, walk down to the marina in the afternoon for the parade and the car show, and eat at the food trucks. This is the version of the weekend that uses the calendar the way it was designed.
What else is open around the edges
The BC Day long weekend is also the last stretch of a summer arts season that has been quietly stacking up around the Comox Valley. Worth knowing about, so you can slot something quieter around the festival crowds:
- The Jeffrey Rubinoff Sculpture Park is open Tuesdays and Thursdays this summer from 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., with a curator-led tour departing at 10 a.m. on most days. Admission is free. This is a good pre-festival Thursday morning if you want a slower start to the weekend.
- The Comox Valley Art Gallery at 580 Duncan Avenue in Courtenay is running its Summer 2026 Make Art Series, drop-in creative sessions that are free to attend.
- Downtown Courtenay's Pulse on the Plaza has been running a summer series of free all-ages evening events with live music and print-making. If you are burnt out on the marina crowd by Sunday, this is the low-key alternative.
None of these compete with the main event. They are what a Comox resident who has already been to Filberg five times uses to fill in the shoulders of the long weekend.
One practical note about the weekend
Comox has been in Stage 3 water restrictions this summer. That has no bearing on the events themselves, but it does mean the town is asking residents to be careful with outdoor water use, and it is the kind of thing that catches out-of-town family off guard when they arrive expecting to hose off sand and salt after a beach day. Fill them in before they get here.
Property taxes were also due July 2 in Comox, which is not festival-relevant but worth mentioning if you are the kind of neighbour who checks in on that sort of thing. That is what "living here" looks like the week the fireworks arrive: one civic deadline, one water advisory, and the biggest weekend of the summer stacking up behind both.
The takeaway
Comox has always had a good BC Day weekend. What has changed is that the two anchor events are now being marketed and scheduled as one continuous festival across the August long weekend. If you have been coming to Filberg for years and skipping Nautical Days, or vice versa, 2026 is the year to try the pair together. You do not need to double your spend to do it. You just need to park once, walk between the two, and let the weekend run at its own pace.
If you are thinking about the neighbourhoods around these events, or you have friends visiting for the long weekend who keep asking what it is really like to live here, the Comox community page is a good starting point.
Enjoy the weekend, and if a walk down Comox Avenue between the two parks has you thinking about staying closer to it all next summer, Stevie Cauvier is happy to talk it through. Start your move — book a Home Hunting Trip with Stevie today.
