The village is called Fairhaven, and it exists eight weekends a year. The rest of the time it is 25 acres of cottages, castles, pubs and stages inside 325 acres of woodland off Poplar Tent Road, waiting for October. When the gates open, more than 300 costumed characters and around 230,000 visitors fill it, and a good share of the visitors are dressed as well.
The Carolina Renaissance Festival was founded in 1994 by Jeff Siegel, and it started as six acres of exhibits.
It started with six acres
Siegel’s company, Royal Faires, already owned and operated the Arizona Renaissance Festival when it opened the Carolina version in 1994 on land between Huntersville and Concord, north of Charlotte. The first festival ran six acres of exhibits, attractions and entertainment, according to the festival’s own history, and it grew each fall. The event’s 25th anniversary in 2018 found it at 25 acres and among the largest Renaissance fairs in the country.
The format is a theatrical recreation of a 16th-century European market festival: an open-air village and artisan marketplace with cottages and bungalows built in the style of the period, 16 outdoor stages for comedy, music, dance and circus acts, and set pieces that have become traditions. Armored knights joust on horseback three times a day. Falconers fly hawks and owls. Mermaids swim in a tank for children. Visitors throw tomatoes at comedic performers, which is a job.
The festival has drawn recognition beyond the region: the Southeast Tourism Society has listed it among its top events, the American Bus Association has named it a top group destination, and USA Today has featured it. The attendance figures vary by source, from around 200,000 to 230,000 a year, but every count places it among the largest Renaissance fairs in the country, up from a first season on six acres that few outside Huntersville noticed.
The man behind it
Jeffrey Siegel is the festival’s producer and the owner of Royal Faires, and he has kept the event a family production for more than three decades. His voice in public has been the one that explains the festival’s purpose. When he canceled the 2020 season for the pandemic, the only year the gates did not open, he described the event as a cornucopia of socially interactive experiences that could not be squared with distancing, and called it an annual fall tradition for many, a unique escape from daily cares where history and fantasy collide. We will be back, he said. The gates opened again in October 2021.
The festival’s growth into one of the largest in the nation happened without a corporate parent or a franchise. It remains a Royal Faires production, recognized by the Southeast Tourism Society and the American Bus Association as a regional landmark event.
Royal Faires’ two festivals, Arizona in the spring and Carolina in the fall, share performers and craftspeople who move between them, which is part of why a festival in Huntersville can field sixteen stages of professional acts. The company has resisted the trend of selling regional festivals to consolidators, and Siegel’s public statements, including the one canceling 2020 and promising the gates would open again, have been in his own voice.
What you actually do
The joust is the anchor, and the falconry and mermaid shows fill the gaps between stage acts. The artisan marketplace runs more than 140 merchants selling handmade jewelry, blown glass, woven clothing, leather and instruments, with craftspeople demonstrating and a working blacksmith forge where visitors can try the hammer. People-powered rides and games of skill cover children, and archery and axe throwing cover adults. Costume rental is available at the gate for anyone who arrives in modern clothes and regrets it.
The food is its own attraction: turkey legs, steak on a stake, bread bowl stews, a bakery and a chocolate shop, with craft ale, honey mead and something called a medieval margarita. Themed weekends run through the season, including a time travelers’ weekend for costumes of any genre, a brewfest, a Halloween weekend and a pirates’ Christmas. The 2025 season ran eight weekends from October 4 to November 23, its 32nd.
The festival’s size means logistics matter. The 325-acre site sits off Poplar Tent Road at 16445, between Huntersville and Concord, and parking, ticket lines and the walk to the village are part of the day. Sundays run lighter than Saturdays, mornings are cooler and less crowded, and families with small children tend to build the day around the joust times and the mermaid shows. Costume rental at the gate and the Dragon Forge blacksmithing are the two things first-time visitors say they wish they had known about before arriving.
Why it matters
Charlotte’s fall calendar is full of festivals, and this is the one that built a town to hold itself. For eight weekends a year a piece of Huntersville becomes somewhere else entirely, staffed by hundreds of performers and artisans who travel a national circuit and treat Fairhaven as a home stand.
Siegel started with six acres and a hunch that the Carolinas wanted what Arizona already had. Thirty-two seasons and a quarter-million visitors a year later, the hunch has a castle.