Overview Tomato Art Fest is a free two-day street festival in East Nashville's Five Points that started as a gallery show of tomato art, and the show still hangs more than 300 tomato-inspired pieces, every one for sale. Around it run a parade of non-motorized floats, a costume contest, a haiku contest and a Biggest, Littlest, Ugliest Tomato contest. The motto is "The Tomato - A Uniter, Not a Divider." Good Neighbor Festivals owns and runs it, and Friends of Shelby Park and Bottoms was its official nonprofit partner in 2026. On site The festival fills the streets where 11th Street, Woodland Street and Clearview Avenue meet, from Friday evening through Saturday. The 37206 Main Stage sits in the Beyond the Edge parking lot, the 11th St. Stage at 11th and Fatherland, and a Contest Stage runs the judging while DJs play around the site. Saturday opens with the Push, Pull and Wear Parade on South 13th Street: floats no bigger than six feet by six, no motors and no commercial banners. The art hangs at the Main Street Gallery, with a shuttle from 10th and Woodland. The site is cashless and outside food and drink are not allowed. Audience People come in costume because the festival asks them to, and they enter the contests themselves: tomato costumes, redheads, haiku, recipes, home decorating and cornhole. Kids get their own art show. Pets are banned for the August heat. Parking is on side streets, so the festival steers people to walk, bike, bus or rideshare in. Talent and Influencers The bills lean on East Nashville musicians. Margo Price, Aaron Lee Tasjan, Todd Snider and The Whigs have all played it. In 2026 The Foxies closed the Friday main stage, and nine DJs worked the site across the weekend. Track record Meg and Bret MacFadyen, owners of the Art and Invention Gallery, hung the first tomato art show in 2003 and founded the festival in 2004. Good Neighbor Festivals came in to help in 2010 and took over in 2019. Nashville Scene readers voted it a Best Festival every year from 2007 to 2024, and the Oxford American, Southern Living and Travel and Leisure have written it up. In 2017 hundreds of people came to break the world record for fruit and vegetable costumes, and everyone forgot to count. Brand presence Two ticketed events sit inside the free festival: the Art Pre View Party the night before, and the 21-and-over Bloody Mary Garden Party on Saturday morning, which Tito's Handmade Vodka presented in 2026 with support from the Tennessee Titans and bartaco. Businesses can enter the parade after case-by-case review. A commemorative enamel pin, redesigned each year from the official art, helps pay for the free programming.