The first public beach in the United States is closing out its season the way it has for years, with artists on the sand and music on the boulevard. The Revere Beach Art Festival runs Saturday, September 12 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Markey Memorial Bridge, the pedestrian span over Revere Beach Boulevard at the Wonderland end of the beach. Admission is free. The same afternoon, two miles west, Chelsea closes Broadway for Chelsea Day. It is a good Saturday to leave the car at home.
The festival
The Revere Beach Partnership, the nonprofit whose stated mission is “to preserve and enhance America’s first public beach for the enjoyment of all,” puts the festival on as part of its Better Beaches programming. The format is straightforward: local artists selling work from tents along the boulevard, live music through the afternoon, and a live art competition in which painters work in front of the crowd against the clock. Last year’s edition ran on September 13; this year’s moves up a day. The partnership has not published a list of this year’s artists or bands, so plan to wander.
Getting there is the easy part. The Blue Line’s Revere Beach and Wonderland stations both open onto the boulevard within a few minutes’ walk of the bridge. From Chelsea, the 116 and 117 buses run to Wonderland. Parking along the boulevard fills early on a warm Saturday, and the state’s Department of Conservation and Recreation lots at Wonderland are the fallback.
The rest of the season
The festival closes a summer that started for Revere with three new parks. In May the city opened three small parks along Shirley Avenue, built through participatory budgeting, in which residents voted on how to spend a slice of the capital budget, and public-private partnerships. The Shirley Avenue neighborhood, the densest and most immigrant-heavy part of the city, held its 13th annual cultural festival on August 29 in the municipal lot at 139 Shirley Avenue.
The city also spent the summer on the World Cup. Its Field of Play watch parties, announced in April as a tourism initiative, ran through the tournament. And the city’s public health department has been busy in a less festive way: Revere is one of the communities the state raised to high risk for West Nile virus on September 4, and residents can request free mosquito spraying from the Northeast Massachusetts Mosquito Control District at (978) 352-2800 for about another week.
What is next on the calendar
- September 12: Revere Beach Art Festival, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., Markey Memorial Bridge.
- September 29 and 30: Cable franchise renewal focus groups, 2 p.m. at City Hall and 6 p.m. at the Revere History Museum on Beach Street. The city wants to hear what residents expect from Comcast, RCN and RevereTV over the next ten years.
- 2027: The McKinley School on Yeamans Street reopens as the Metro North Regional Emergency Communications Center and a 210-seat preschool. Ground was broken in April.
The art festival is the one that requires no preparation. Take the train, bring cash for the artists, and stay for the competition.
Sources: Revere Beach Partnership; City of Revere calendar and Mayor’s Updates, May 15, April 24 and September 8, 2026; Revere Journal, September 9, 2026; City of Revere, April 17, 2026. Photo: Revere Beach station, July 2021, by Pi.1415926535 via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.