Columbus Activities: Festivals / Events

Full Columbus Travel Guide »    Columbus Interactive Map »    Print This Article »

These are a few of the larger/major events in Columbus:

• All American Quarter Horse Congress, Ohio Expo Center/Fairgrounds, Oct. www.oqha.com
• The Arnold Fitness Classic Held once a year in early March at the Columbus Convention Center. Tons of competitions ranging from martial arts to cheerleading to bench press, plenty of "fitness babes" and free supplement samples, and speeches from California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger himself. www.arnoldexpo.com
• Asian Festival At Franklin Park. Annual Event. May. Food, games, market place, health screening. Great location! Free. asian-festival.org/index.do

Asian Fest

• Columbus Arts Festival, festival@gcac.org Downtown Riverfront. June (annual event) Arts, crafts, food, music, entertainment. Big event. www.gcac.org/fest
• Columbus Jazz and Rib Fest, River Front downtown, July. Expect 500-700,000 people at this fun food and music event held each year.
• ComFest, the Columbus Community Festival, at Goodale Park in June. Music, arts, culture, shopping, fair food, beer & bare feet. Who's who of Columbus musicians and those from elsewhere! www.comfest.com
• Festival Latino, is held on the downtown River Front in the middle of June each year. Billed as "The largest Hispanic/Latino event in Ohio". Lot's of food, fun, entertainment and feista. Free admission. www.festivallatino.net
• German Village Oktoberfest, South Grant & East Livingston Ave September.
• Good Guys Columbus Ohio State Fairgrounds, Over 6,000 rods, customs, classics, muscle cars, street machines and trucks thru ’72. July. cokertire.com/page/shows/2006-show-archive/good-guys-columbus-oh-july-7-9
• Ohio Expo Center. 717 E. 17th Ave. www.ohiostatefair.com/oec/oec.htm Home to The Ohio State Fair. Each month, a variety of shows, expositions and competitions are held at the Ohio Expo Center, over 175 events per year. These range from shopping for antiques to boxing, there is something for everyone at the Ohio Expo Center.
• Origins International Game Expo Origins is run by The Game Manufacturers Association (GAMA) as one of their two shows for the adventure gaming industry. (The second show, the GAMA Trade Show, is for game manufacturers and retailers only.) Origins is specifically chartered to serve adventure gaming in general, including wargames and miniatures gaming, which tend to be less well represented at Gen Con and Dragon*Con. Board games, trading card games, and role-playing games are also popular at Origins. It is usually compared in size with E3 and GenCon, and is famous for it's Origin Awards. The Origins Award is commonly referred to as a Calliope, as the statuette is in the likeness of the Muse of the same name. Academy members frequently shorten this name to "Callie."
• Red, White & BOOM, downtown, river front. Take a bus, traffic is as bad as it gets in Columbus for this event. Billed as The biggest and best Independence Day fireworks celebration in the Midwest. July. www.redwhiteandboom.org/index.php
• Experience Columbus (the convention & visitors bureau) www.experiencecolumbus.com/event-calendar.cfm, has a complete calendar of events.