New chapter ahead for Strawberry Festival

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, April 29, 2026

For more than a century, Vashon has found reasons to celebrate in July.

What began as a modest Island Fair in 1900 evolved into the Strawberry Festival in 1909, survived two world wars, a pandemic and decades of changing sponsors — from the Grange to the Jaycees to the Chamber of Commerce — enduring because the island always found someone willing to carry it forward.

Now, the structure behind that work may change again.

The Vashon Chamber of Commerce is exploring a new model for running the Strawberry Festival and other signature island events after the 2026 season, as the organization redirects more of its limited staff and volunteer capacity toward business advocacy, lobbying and hands-on member resources.

The shift follows a unanimous October 2025 vote by the Chamber board to redirect the organization’s attention toward member support and advocacy.

The goal, Chamber leaders said, is not to abandon the festival, but to build a more sustainable structure for it — one that allows the Chamber to remain involved as a supporting partner while a dedicated group focuses on producing the event.

Elijah Berry, who served on the Chamber board for roughly a year and a half before becoming president about a month ago, said the organization has heard a recurring question from businesses over the years: What does Chamber membership offer them?

Increasingly, he said, the answer is advocacy.

“If you’re a business on the island and you want to know how other businesses are doing, or you need connection or resources — the Chamber of Commerce really should be more of a fellowship of island businesses for mutual support,” Berry said.

The Chamber, which operates as a 501(c)(6) nonprofit, is permitted to engage in lobbying — an area Berry said the organization has not had enough capacity to fully pursue while also producing large community events.

Berry said the Chamber is already working with a lobbyist who lived on Vashon for years and is building what he hopes will become a stronger legislative agenda for island businesses. There are also grants the Chamber has been eligible for but has not had the staff or volunteer bandwidth to chase.

A new model for events

The 2026 season will remain familiar: The Chamber plans to keep the Strawberry Festival, CiderFest and other signature events in place this year.

After that, the organization hopes to transition some events to new homes — either existing nonprofits or newly formed groups created specifically to support them.

For the Strawberry Festival, Chamber leaders are especially interested in the possibility of a new 501(c)(3) nonprofit focused solely on the festival. That structure would allow for tax-deductible donations from individuals and businesses — something the Chamber cannot currently offer.

“There are people who donate to the festival, but it’s not tax deductible,” Berry said. “Moving it to that structure would open the doors for people to be more generous to get the festival going.”

That kind of dedicated nonprofit, Berry said, could ultimately make the festival stronger by giving it a board whose sole focus is bringing the event to life — rather than balancing festival production with business advocacy, grants, legislative work and member services.

“The festival is an incredible asset to the island, and it deserves a team whose sole focus is bringing it to life,” Berry said.

The Chamber’s other events — including CiderFest, Winterfest, Vashon Summer Nights, Halloween and more — are also being discussed as part of the transition.

CiderFest is expected to be taken over by a partnership between the newly formed community foundation, VIGA and the Vashon Island Fruit Club.

The Strawberry Festival, by sheer scale and complexity, is the hardest piece to place, Berry said.

“It is certainly not a question of the festival being ‘worth the effort,’” Berry said. “We love this event. But as a small organization, we have to make sure we are doing right by both our member businesses and the broader Vashon community.”

A history of reinvention

The history of the Strawberry Festival is, in many ways, the history of Vashon itself — a story of community reinvention.

The island’s first organized celebration, the Vashon Island Fair, dates to 1900.

The Strawberry Festival name appeared for the first time in 1909, though it took years to find its footing — canceled when workers were needed in the fields during World War I, scrapped again during World War II, and at one point abandoned from 1959 to 1962 because, as island historian Bruce Haulman’s records note plainly, there was “no one to organize it.”

The festival didn’t survive because of any one institution. It survived because, again and again, someone stepped up: the Vashon-Maury Federation Club, the Commercial Club, the Grange, the Jaycees, Allied Arts and eventually the Chamber.

Along the way, it changed names almost as often as it changed hands: the Peach Festival in 1947 and 1948, the Harvest Festival from 1949 to 1952, the Vashon Island Festival from 1953 to 1979, and a brief stretch as “Strawberries Forever” in the early 1980s — before settling back into Strawberry Festival in 1983, the name it has carried ever since.

What comes next

Berry is clear-eyed about what the transition requires. The festival doesn’t just need a name on a permit — it needs people willing to do the unglamorous work of logistics, insurance, vendor management and coordination that the Chamber has been carrying, often with an events coordinator doing much of the heavy lifting on the organization’s behalf.

“The Chamber absolutely plans to remain actively engaged with the Strawberry Festival,” Berry said. “We just want to shift from being the sole driver to being a dedicated, supporting partner.”

He acknowledged that some current Chamber board members might choose to join whatever new organization takes the festival on.

The line between the Chamber and a future festival nonprofit may be blurry, at least at first. What will be different is where the formal responsibility sits — and, Berry hopes, what the Chamber is free to do without it.

For now, the summer of 2026 will look familiar. The parade will march. The booths will open. But somewhere behind the scenes, the island will decide — as it has so many times before — how to carry one of its oldest traditions into its next chapter.

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that CiderFest may go to Cheryl Lubbert of Nashi Orchards, a past Chamber president and current board member. CiderFest is expected to be taken over by a partnership between the newly formed community foundation, VIGA and the Vashon Island Fruit Club.