Numerous festivals, shows and exhibitions are held annually in
Toronto
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anch ...
. They include:
January
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Winterlicious
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Toronto Design Offsite Festival
DesignTO (known as the Toronto Design Offsite Festival until 2019) is a nonprofit arts organization that is most well known for DesignTO Festival, a design week showcasing Canadian designers held in Toronto, Ontario
Ontario ( ; ) is one of th ...
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Toronto Design Week Toronto Design Week is the unofficial name of the events and exhibitions hosted by DesignTO, formerly known as the Toronto Design Offsite Festival. It is a design showcase in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, where numerous design exhibitions take place o ...
February
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Canadian International AutoShow - at the Metro Convention Centre
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Winter City
Winter City or Winter Cities is a concept for communities in northern latitudes that encourages them to plan their transportation systems, buildings, and recreation project around the idea of using their infrastructure during all four seasons, rat ...
March
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Cinéfranco Cinéfranco is an annual film festival in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, which presents a weeklong program of both Canadian and international French language films.
History
The festival was established in 1997 by Marcelle Lean, a former chair of the On ...
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St Patrick's Day Parade
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Canadian Music Week
Canadian Music Week (or CMW) is an industry conference and music festival held over ten days in Toronto and Ontario, Canada.
History
Canadian Music Week began in 1981 and has grown to become one of Canada's largest and most influential media a ...
April
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Sporting Life 10K
The Sporting Life 10K is an annual 10K running/walking event on Yonge Street in Toronto
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populou ...
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Hot Docs
The Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival is the largest documentary festival in North America. The event takes place annually in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The 27th edition of the festival took place online throughout May and June ...
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Khalsa Day parade, first held in 1986
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Toronto Fashion Week
Toronto Fashion Week (TFW), held in February (for fall/winter collections) and September (for spring/summer collections) of each year, is a semi-annual event celebrating fashion, arts and culture where Canadian and international fashion collectio ...
May
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Cabbagetown Forsythia Festival - Held the first Sunday in May.
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Doors Open Toronto
Doors Open Toronto is an annual event when approximately 150 buildings of architectural, historic, cultural, and social significance to the city of Toronto open their doors to the public for this free citywide event.
Doors Open Toronto was devel ...
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Science Rendezvous
Science Rendezvous is the largest science festival in Canada; its inaugural event happened across the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) on Saturday, May 10, 2008 with the support from the University of Toronto, Ryerson University (now Toronto Met ...
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Anime North
Anime North (AN) is a non-profit, fan-run anime convention, held every year in Etobicoke, a district in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Its major attractions, activities and events include a Masquerade, a Dealers Room, an Artists Alley, Guest of H ...
- Usually held the weekend following Victoria Day, although some times during the long weekend.
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Toronto Comic Arts Festival at
Toronto Reference Library
The Toronto Reference Library is a public reference library in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The library is located on the corner of Yonge Street and Asquith Avenue, within the Yorkville neighbourhood of downtown Toronto. The Toronto Reference Library ...
June
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Luminato a festival of arts and creativity established in 2007
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North by Northeast
North by Northeast (or NXNE) is an annual music and arts festival held each June in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The festival's main focus is live music, but it also includes an eSports gaming tournament, comedy, a conversations series, a flea mark ...
, an annual five-day live music and film festival and music conference
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Pride Week a large
gay pride
LGBT pride (also known as gay pride or simply pride) is the promotion of the self-affirmation, dignity, equality, and increased visibility of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people as a social group. Pride, as opposed to s ...
festival
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Toronto Downtown Jazz Festival The Toronto Jazz Festival is a jazz event in Toronto which takes place for 10 days in late June through early July. Unlike the Beaches International Jazz Festival, most of the events are indoors and located throughout the downtown core. The hub o ...
- various indoors and located throughout the downtown core
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MuchMusic Video Awards
The iHeartRadio MMVAs were an annual awards show broadcast on Much to honour the year's best music videos that was last held in 2018.
Originally debuting in 1990 as the Canadian Music Video Awards, the awards were renamed in 1995 to the MuchMu ...
*
Toronto International Dragon Boat Festival
The Toronto International Dragon Boat Race Festival (TIDBRF), is an annual dragon boat race and cultural event, first held in Toronto, Ontario, Canada in 1989. It developed from the Toronto Chinese Business Association held in Toronto, Ontario. ...
- Centre Island
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Fête de la Musique
The Fête de la Musique, also known in English as Music Day, Make Music Day or World Music Day, is an annual music celebration that takes place on 21 June. On Music Day, citizens and residents are urged to play music outside in their neighborho ...
(World Music Day) - June 21 annually. Musicians from all over the world perform free concerts throughout the city
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VRTO Virtual & Augmented Reality World Conference & Expo
Started in 2015 by Keram Malicki-Sanchez as a virtual reality Meetup Group in Toronto, VRTO launched the VRTO Virtual & Augmented Reality World Conference & Expo in June 2016 – an international exhibition and professional conference exploring ...
- a
virtual reality
Virtual reality (VR) is a simulated experience that employs pose tracking and 3D near-eye displays to give the user an immersive feel of a virtual world. Applications of virtual reality include entertainment (particularly video games), edu ...
conference that takes place the 3rd week of June, annually.
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World Naked Bike Ride
The World Naked Bike Ride (WNBR) is an international clothing-optional bike ride in which participants plan, meet and ride together ''en masse'' on human-powered transport (the vast majority on bicycles, but some on skateboards and inline skates ...
, annually since June 2004.
July
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Toronto Fringe Festival
The Toronto Fringe Festival is an annual theatre festival, featuring un-juried plays by unknown or well-known artists, taking place in the theatres of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Several productions originally mounted at the Fringe have later been ...
, Toronto's largest theatre festival
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Honda Indy Toronto
The Grand Prix of Toronto (known for sponsorship reasons as the Honda Indy Toronto) is an annual Indy Car race, held in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Originally known as the Molson Indy Toronto, it was part of the Champ Car World Series from 1986 t ...
at
Exhibition Place
Exhibition Place is a publicly owned mixed-use district in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located by the shoreline of Lake Ontario, just west of downtown. The site includes exhibit, trade, and banquet centres, theatre and music buildings, monuments ...
*
Caribana
The Toronto Caribbean Carnival, formerly known as Caribana, is a festival of Caribbean culture and traditions held each summer in the city of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is a pan-Caribbean Carnival event and has been billed as North America's ...
is North America's largest street festival, showcasing Caribbean/West Indian culture (in some years early August).
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Beaches International Jazz Festival -
The Beaches
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Summerlicious
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ConBravo!
ConBravo! is an annual fan-run anime, gaming, and new media convention held during July in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, since 2010. The convention was created as a multi-genre event which has given it much of its framework, but has since begun to ...
fandom convention
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Brickfete LEGO Fan Festival
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Rogers Cup
The Canadian Open (french: Tournoi de tennis du Canada), also known as the Canada Masters, and currently branded as the National Bank Open presented by Rogers for sponsorship reasons, is an annual tennis tournament held in Ontario and Quebec. T ...
- An
ATP World Tour Masters 1000
The ATP Masters 1000 tournaments (previously known as ATP Masters Series) is an annual series of nine tennis tournaments featuring the top-ranked players on the ATP Tour. The series' events have been held in Europe and North America since the ...
and
WTA Tour
The WTA Tour is a worldwide top-tier tennis tour for women organized by the Women's Tennis Association. The second-tier tour is the WTA 125K series, and third-tier is the ITF Women's Circuit. The men's equivalent is the ATP Tour.
WTA Tour tou ...
Premier 5 tennis
Tennis is a racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent (singles) or between two teams of two players each (doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket that is strung with cord to strike a hollow rubber ball cov ...
tournament held annually since 1881.
August
*The
Canadian National Exhibition
The Canadian National Exhibition (CNE), also known as The Exhibition or The Ex, is an annual event that takes place at Exhibition Place in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on the third Friday of August leading up to and including Canadian Labour Day ...
(CNE, or "the Ex").
*The
Taste of the Danforth
Taste of the Danforth is a yearly festival held in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in the Greektown area along Danforth Avenue for a period of three days in August, spawned from the Taste of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois, United States. It is curren ...
festival showcases the mostly Greek culture of
The Danforth
Danforth Avenue (informally also known as the Danforth) and Danforth Road are two historically-related arterial streets in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Danforth ''Avenue'' is an east-west street that begins in Old Toronto at the Prince Edward ...
and has expanded to include other cultures of the area.
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Fan Expo Canada
Fan Expo Canada is an annual speculative fiction fan convention held in Toronto, Ontario. It was founded as the Canadian National Comic Book Expo in 1995[Canadian International Air Show
The Canadian International Air Show (CIAS) is an annual air show in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The show is an aeronautical display of military, government and civilian aircraft, primarily from Canada and the United States. The show takes place al ...](_blank)
-off CNE grounds over
Lake Ontario
Lake Ontario is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. It is bounded on the north, west, and southwest by the Canadian province of Ontario, and on the south and east by the U.S. state of New York. The Canada–United States border sp ...
*The
Terry Fox Run
The Terry Fox Run is an annual non-competitive charity event held around the world to raise money for cancer research
in commemoration of Canadian cancer activist Terry Fox and his Marathon of Hope.
The event was founded in 1981 by Isadore Sha ...
*The
Toronto International Film Festival
The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF, often stylized as tiff) is one of the largest publicly attended film festivals in the world, attracting over 480,000 people annually. Since its founding in 1976, TIFF has grown to become a perman ...
is considered one of the big three global film events, with
Cannes
Cannes ( , , ; oc, Canas) is a city located on the French Riviera. It is a commune located in the Alpes-Maritimes department, and host city of the annual Cannes Film Festival, Midem, and Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. The ...
and
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitu ...
, with more screens and more films than either.
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Cabbagetown Fall Festival, - Held the second weekend in September.
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third week September
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Virgin Festival, based on the British festival
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Word on the Street - Canada's largest, annual outdoor book and magazine festival
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Taste of the Kingsway - A celebration of food and music, the Taste of the Kingsway festival is a family-friendly way to honour the community.
October
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Nuit Blanche
Nuit Blanche () (White Night) is an annual all-night or night-time arts festival of a city. A Nuit Blanche typically has museums, private and public art galleries, and other cultural institutions open and free of charge, with the centre of the ...
*The
Toronto Waterfront Marathon
The Toronto Waterfront Marathon is an annual marathon held in Toronto, Ontario, Canada in October. The race day also includes a half marathon and 5 km race.
The race has quickly become an elite level marathon and is one of just five World A ...
- One of just five
IAAF Gold Label marathons in North America, run along the waterfront starting and ending in downtown Toronto
*The
Toronto After Dark Film Festival
Toronto After Dark Film Festival is a showcase of horror, sci-fi, action and cult cinema held annually in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The festival premieres a diverse selection of feature-length and short-films from around the world including n ...
November
*The Canadian
FinTech Awards. An annual Gala Awards Dinner to celebrate Canadian Innovation, which was started in 2015.
*The
Toronto Santa Claus Parade
The Toronto Santa Claus Parade, also branded as ''The Original Santa Claus Parade'', is a Santa Claus parade held annually on the third Sunday of November in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
First held in 1905, it is one of the largest parade productio ...
(Started in 1904 with just a single float, it now boasts 32 floats, 24 bands, and 2000 participants. It is one of the biggest productions in North America, and broadcast to many countries around the world.)
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Cavalcade of Lights.
*The
Royal Agricultural Winter Fair
The Royal Agricultural Winter Fair (RAWF), also known as The Royal, is an annual agricultural fair that is held in Toronto, Ontario, Canada during the first two weeks of November. It was inaugurated in 1922 in the Coliseum, on the grounds of Exhi ...
, an annual fall fair started in 1922.
December
*
Reviving the Islamic Spirit
See also
*
List of Asian events in Toronto
References
External links
Toronto Festivals & Events DirectoryEvent listings
{{Toronto
Annual events
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Lists of annual events