Hundreds of music lovers flocked to Victoria Park for the first ever Exchange Folk Festival on Saturday. The new event is a spiritual successor to the Regina Folk Festival — a longstanding local tradition that lasted for over 50 years before shutting down in 2025. “Clearly this was a void in Regina summers and we’re looking to fill it,” said executive director John Kennedy. Though under a new name, spectators were happy to see a folk festival return to the Queen City for the first time in person since 2023. “For me ... it was kind of the end-of-the-summer concert type of thing, in the sense of having live music outside,” said spectator Jim Elliott, who’s been watching local acts for the past 35 years. “This was kind of the big one. There were a few other ones, but they tended to not be as large and as engaging as this one was.” Elliott said that old festivals sometimes had 4,000-5,000 people attending. In the early hours of the Exchange Folk Festival, Kennedy said organizers were seeing around 700-800 people. The free-to-attend festival featured 15 musical acts on Saturday. The event, which is hosted by the Saskatchewan Cultural Exchange Society (or the Exchange) is meant to be more accessible and inclusive while also honouring the previous festival. “It was just frantic until the gates opened, then people started coming in and it’s really amazing,” said Kennedy. “This isn’t the Regina Folk Festival here, this is a brand new venture ... we’re trying to reset people’s expectations on what the festival experience is going to be, and then we’re going to grow it deliberately and intentionally as we go forward.” Elliott said it was important for the community to go out and support the event. “I think they were in the past, but I think we need to rebuild that community engagement and community-building model for this,” he said. “[We need to] look at this as not simply a performance area but in fact a community building [event], especially for downtown.” After a 2024 hiatus, the Regina Folk Festival was cancelled in 2025 and its board was dissolved due to financial issues and reduced operational capacity.
