Lanesboro's Rhubarb Festival: A Sweet-Tart Celebration in Minnesota’s Rhubarb Capital

Lanesboro has a love affair with rhubarb.

That might sound strange at first. But spend one early-June Saturday in Sylvan Park, surrounded by rhubarb treats, rhubarb games, rhubarb art, rhubarb music, and people proudly wearing pink and green, and it starts to make perfect sense. This is a town that knows how to take something humble, hardy, and a little unexpected—and turn it into a full-blown celebration.

In 2008, Lanesboro was officially recognized as Minnesota’s Rhubarb Capital. The title fits. Rhubarb grows here with the same stubborn charm that defines so much of Bluff Country: resilient, surprising, rooted, and always ready to come back strong after a long Minnesota winter.

A festival with deep local roots

The Lanesboro Rhubarb Festival began as a community effort, growing out of the energy around the local farmers market and the many growers, cooks, volunteers, and rhubarb enthusiasts who understood that this sour stalk deserved its own spotlight. What started as a one-day celebration has become one of Lanesboro’s most distinctive annual traditions.

Today, the festival is held in Sylvan Park in downtown Lanesboro, typically on the first Saturday in June. The 2026 Rhubarb Fest is scheduled for Saturday, June 6, in Sylvan Park, with the official event description promising “free tastings of rhubarb delights, games, music and fun.”

At its heart, the festival is simple: gather people in the park, celebrate Minnesota’s sweet-tart favorite, and see just how many creative directions rhubarb can go.

Come hungry: the tasting contest is the main event

For many visitors, the tasting contest is the reason to come early.

Local cooks bring rhubarb-based creations ranging from the familiar to the wonderfully unexpected. Think strawberry-rhubarb classics, rhubarb bars, cookies, sauces, desserts, drinks, and savory experiments that prove rhubarb can do much more than pie. Past festival lore includes entries like ginger rhubarb cordials, rhubarb-chocolate ice cream, rhubarb lace, rhu-jerky, rhubarb-charged stuffing, and even rhubarb chile.

Festival-goers get to sample, vote, and discover just how inventive a community can be when given a garden stalk, a little sugar, and permission to have fun. The current Rhubarb Festival listing highlights the tasting contest as a centerpiece, where visitors taste a variety of rhubarb treats and vote for their favorites.

Rhubarb games, music, art, and family fun

The Lanesboro Rhubarb Festival is not just about eating — though eating is certainly encouraged.

The day often begins with the Rhubarb Run, a festive race that brings runners and walkers into the spirit of the celebration before the park fills with food, music, and activities. It’s one of the many ways Rhubarb Fest turns a simple Saturday in June into a full community celebration.

Over the years, the festival has included rhubarb games and contests, live music, a rhubarb fashion show, family-friendly activities, and plenty of playful local humor. One of the best-known bits of festival history involves rhubarb-themed games once called the “Rhubarb Olympics,” until the International Olympic Committee objected. Lanesboro, naturally, adapted. The games became the “Rhu-Lympics.”

That spirit still defines the festival: creative, funny, deeply local, and just strange enough to be memorable.

Why rhubarb fits Lanesboro

Part of the festival’s charm is that rhubarb itself feels like a perfect metaphor for Lanesboro.

It is hardy. It is low-maintenance. It comes back year after year. It has a funny name and a tart personality. On its own, it can be a little intense—but with imagination, care, and the right mix of ingredients, it becomes something people remember.

That is what makes the Rhubarb Festival feel so true to this place. It is not polished in a generic festival way. It is playful, homegrown, and wonderfully specific. It connects visitors to backyard memories, farm kitchens, family recipes, neighborhood gardens, and the kind of small-town creativity that cannot be manufactured.

As former Rhubarb Sister Robin Edmiston put it in in Steve Harris's book, Lanesboro, Minnesota: “Rhubarb means happiness and happiness means home.”

Make a day of it in Lanesboro

The festival takes place in Sylvan Park, just steps from downtown Lanesboro, making it easy to turn Rhubarb Fest into a full day—or a full weekend.

Before or after the festival, visitors can explore local shops and galleries, grab lunch or a treat downtown, visit the Root River State Trail, or take in Lanesboro’s arts scene. The festival’s location at Sylvan Park also puts visitors close to the heart of town, with the Root River, historic downtown, and local attractions all nearby.

Whether you come for the tasting contest, the music, the art activities, the rhubarb games, or the sheer novelty of celebrating a vegetable that behaves like a fruit, Rhubarb Fest is one of those events that captures Lanesboro at its best: welcoming, creative, a little quirky, and full of heart.

So come hungry. Wear pink and green if you’re feeling festive. And leave room for one more piece of pie.

Event Details

Lanesboro Rhubarb Fest
Date: Saturday, June 6, 2026, 10a-2p
Location: Sylvan Park, Lanesboro, MN
What to expect: Rhubarb tastings, games, music, family-friendly fun, and rhubarb-inspired creativity.

Special thanks to local Lanesboro historian and author Steve Harris, whose writing about Rhubarb Fest in his book "Lanesboro, Minnesota" helped inform and inspire portions of this article.

Rhubarb Fest photos above credited to Barb Jeffers, Bluff Country Photography.