Fifty days out from the start of the 100th National Cherry Festival, Executive Director Kat Paye is feeling both excited and apprehensive. On the one hand, the milestone aspect of this year’s festival is almost guaranteed to draw extra attention and attendance. On the other hand, Paye says planning for the Cherry Festival’s centennial has been a big challenge, with everything from elevated attendee expectations to a concurrent national semiquincentennial putting up hurdles.

This year’s festival will kick off on Saturday, July 4 – the same day the United States celebrates its own 250th birthday. While that convergence could mean an extra celebratory atmosphere (“To have that type of energy and anticipation day one – and then to have that energy carry through the week – I just think it’s going to be a great, great festival this year,” says Traverse City Tourism President/CEO Trevor Tkach), Paye admits it’s also made planning for the Cherry Festival’s own milestone more challenging.

“We’ve been planning this festival for a number of years, because our parades, our air shows, things like that, really do have to be planned multiple years in advance,” Paye explains. “We knew coming in that it was America's 250th birthday, along with the festival's 100th, all opening on the Fourth of July. So, we knew there were going to be some challenges with scheduling when it came to air show performers, parade marshals, musical performers, things like that. We had best-laid plans, but a few things have changed that were completely out of our control.”

Chief among those changes was the air show. Typically, the Cherry Festival books the U.S. Navy Blue Angels every other year. Given that the beloved flight squadron last brought its death-defying aerobatics to Traverse City in the summer of 2024, the Cherry Festival team hoped to have the Blue Angels back to headline the 100th anniversary in 2026. Instead, the festival announced in December that the Angels won’t return until 2027.

“We did not anticipate that an air show that is traditionally on Memorial Day weekend was going to shift to the Fourth of July,” Paye tells The Ticker, referring to the famous FourLeaf Air Show held each year at Jones Beach State Park in Wantagh, New York. Like the Cherry Festival air show, FourLeaf is typically headlined by either the Blue Angels or the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds. Unlike the Cherry Festival, FourLeaf has never taken place in July until this year.

“When we were looking at this date three, four, five years ago, the plan was for sure to have the Blue Angels,” Paye says. Instead, FourLeaf’s booking of the Blue Angels left the Cherry Festival scrambling to find an alternative option for its own air show.

“We were hopeful the Thunderbirds would be able to make an appearance this year, but we found out in December that was not an option,” Paye continues. Instead, this year’s air show will be headlined by the Air Combat Command F-16 Viper Demo Team, a U.S. Air Force aerial team based at Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina. The show will also feature the C-17 West Coast Demo Team, the U.S. Navy F/A-18 Rhino Demo Team, and a search-and-rescue demo team from the U.S. Coast Guard’s local air station.

While Paye knows Cherry Festival regulars will be disappointed not to see the Blue Angels for the 100th anniversary, she hopes this year’s festival will still do justice to the milestone. Organizers are bringing back a few retired events in tribute to the festival’s past (highlights include the milk carton boat regatta and the downtown bed race) and introducing new ones (like the premiere of a documentary showcasing “100 years of the cherry industry and the Cherry Festival, and how it all ties together”; and the festival’s first-ever nighttime air show, featuring a drone display choreographed to the Fourth of July fireworks).

In order to pay tribute to the festival’s history, Paye says the 100-year celebration will spill outside of actual festival week.

“We have a historical exhibit that will be in the lower level of Horizon Books, and that will start in late June and run through the festival,” Paye says. “There will be about two weeks where you can go down and see all of the history of the Cherry Festival, including the original Cherry Queen's dress from 1926, the crowns from over the years, all of the programs from the band competition, the original capes that the junior royals wore in the 1940s, and more.”

Core festival traditions, of course, will endure – including nightly concerts at the Bayside Music Stage (performers this year include Ludacris, The Fray, KC and the Sunshine Band, and Daughtry), the Midway carnival from Arnold’s Amusements, the Festival of Races, and various parades.

“We have 150 events in eight days, so there’s plenty going on,” Paye concludes. “But it’s definitely been challenging to deliver what I think the community is hoping for. I think expectation and reality has been really interesting so far. As we’ve been announcing things, we’ve had a lot of people saying, ‘Oh, we expected more,’ and I always say, ‘Tell me more about what you expected!’ Our budgets haven't changed a lot, but we need to produce the festival we always do, and then some. So, it’s definitely been a unique process, but we’re still excited, and we know that, in the end, it’s going to be an amazing celebration of cherries.”