Purple juice runs to the ankles. A crowd leans over the rail of a wooden tub, somebody’s aunt is shrieking with laughter, and a stomper in rolled-up shorts is marching in place like the grapes owe her money. Over on the Pepsi Stage a band is kicking into the next song, and the smell of fermenting muscadines drifts across the lawn toward the lake. That is SeptemberFest at Barefoot Landing, and it comes back this Saturday, September 19, 2026.

This year carries two milestones at once. It is the 10th annual SeptemberFest, and it hosts the 50th annual Duplin Winery Grape Stomp, a tradition that started at North Carolina’s oldest operating winery long before anyone was selling T-shirts on Highway 17. The festival runs from noon to 5 p.m. in Dockside Village, and walking in, watching the stomp and listening to the music cost nothing.¹

SeptemberFest also falls at the best time of year on this coast. Labor Day is behind us, the summer traffic has thinned, the ocean is still warm, and the beach rules have relaxed for the season. For anyone staying in North Myrtle Beach, the festival is a few minutes’ drive from the sand and an easy way to fill a Saturday afternoon between a morning walk on the beach and a sunset dinner on the waterway.

Here is what is happening, when it happens, how to get a grape stomp ticket now that advance sales have closed, and how to turn the day into a full early-fall weekend.

SeptemberFest 2026 at a Glance

SeptemberFest is Barefoot Landing’s end-of-summer celebration, put on with Duplin Winery, which runs its tasting room and store on the property. The festival centers on Dockside Village, the restaurant district on the waterfront side of the complex. The grape stomp itself happens on the lawn between Crooked Hammock Brewery and the Barefoot Landing Playground, so families can keep one eye on the tubs and the other on the swings.²

Schedules and ticket details can change. Confirm with Barefoot Landing and Duplin Winery before you head out.

The 50th Annual Duplin Winery Grape Stomp

Duplin Winery opened in Rose Hill, North Carolina, in 1975 and is known across the South for muscadine wines. Muscadines are the thick-skinned grapes that grow wild in the Carolinas, sweet and a little musky, the grape a lot of Southern families remember picking off a backyard arbor. Duplin expanded to North Myrtle Beach in 2015, and the Barefoot Landing location has been a steady stop for visitors ever since.³

The stomp is exactly what it sounds like. You take off your shoes, climb into a tub of muscadines and get to work. It is messy, loud and not remotely dignified, which is the whole point. Grown men who would never dance at a wedding end up high-stepping in front of strangers, and kids treat it like the best mud puddle they have ever found.

What the Ticket Includes

Stomp tickets have been listed at $35 per person. The ticket covers the stomp itself, a bottle of Duplin’s Fifty Crush (a wine named for the 50th stomp) and a custom-designed souvenir cup made for this year’s event. Spectators do not need a ticket.^1,4

How to Get a Ticket Now

Advance online sales closed on Monday, September 14. That leaves festival day. Duplin Winery will sell a limited number of tickets at its tent starting at 11 a.m., first come, first served, until they run out. If a stomp is the reason you are going, plan to be at the tent before it opens. Barefoot Landing’s parking lots are large, but they fill up on a festival Saturday, and the line at the tent forms early.

A practical tip from people who have done it: wear shorts or pants you can roll well above the knee, and bring a small towel and a pair of flip-flops for afterward. Muscadine juice stains, and you will be walking back across the boardwalk.

The WPDE Celebrity Stomp Off

At 2 p.m. the tubs get famous. WPDE ABC15 is sending a team of familiar faces from its newsroom for the Celebrity Stomp Off. The lineup includes Simon Williams, Kyra Purvis, Amanda Kinseth, Andrew James, Jennifer Abney and chief meteorologist Ed Piotrowski, the man most of the Grand Strand trusts when a storm is heading this way.²

There is something satisfying about watching the people who deliver the evening news up to their shins in grape skins. Get to the lawn a few minutes early if you want a spot along the rail. The Stomp Off falls right in the gap between the two bands, so the crowd tends to drift over from the stage all at once.

Live Music on the Pepsi Stage

Two Grand Strand bands split the afternoon on the Pepsi Stage in Dockside Village. Sunburst Radio opens at noon and plays until 2 p.m. They play regularly at local spots like Local on the Water, Neal & Pam’s and Sugrue’s Pub, so plenty of people in the crowd will already know them. After the Stomp Off, 100 Grand Band, a Myrtle Beach group, takes over at 2:30 p.m. and plays through to the 5 p.m. close.^1,5

Waterfront music is one of the things this coast does best, and Dockside Village is built for it. You can stand near the stage, find a table along the boardwalk, or listen from the lawn while the stomp goes on. If the afternoon puts you in the mood for more, our guide to Myrtle Beach events lists what else is on the Grand Strand calendar this fall.

Sidewalk Sales Across Barefoot Landing

SeptemberFest also doubles as a shopping day. Fourteen Barefoot Landing merchants are setting up sidewalk sales for the festival: Big Chill Island House, Cariloha, Charleston Shoe Co., Dressed By Jess, Earthbound Trading, Faux Paws, Havens Marketplace, Holly Street Home, Monkee’s, Savannah Bee, Shining Sol, Spice & Tea Exchange, Sunglass Hut and Tiki Jim’s.¹

The mix covers a lot of ground. There is bamboo-fabric clothing at Cariloha, raw honey at Savannah Bee, spice blends to take home to your kitchen at Spice & Tea Exchange, and pet treats and gear at Faux Paws. Shoppers who want to keep going after the festival will find more ideas in our local’s guide to fall shopping in the North Myrtle Beach area.

Stilt Walkers, Photo Ops and Adoptable Dogs

Kids get plenty to do beyond the tubs. Costumed stilt walkers will roam the grounds tying balloon animals, and a photo station is set up for family pictures. With the playground right next to the stomp lawn, parents can let younger kids burn off energy without missing the action.²

The Humane Society of North Myrtle Beach is also coming, with adoptable dogs, merchandise and raffles.¹ Fair warning: families have gone to a festival for grapes and come home with a dog.

If your own dog is traveling with you, Barefoot Landing welcomes pets on a leash or in a pet stroller, and waste stations are set up around the property. Each merchant decides whether pets can come inside, so ask before you walk in.⁶ September is also a good month to bring a dog to the coast in general. The seasonal dog restrictions on the sand lifted after Labor Day, as we explained in our breakdown of how the beach rules change after Labor Day.

Barefoot Landing Beyond the Festival

Barefoot Landing sits on the Intracoastal Waterway along Highway 17 South, with more than 100 shops and restaurants spread across boardwalks and around a lake. It opened in its current form in 1988 and has been one of North Myrtle Beach’s main gathering places ever since.⁷

After the festival closes at 5, the complex keeps going. Crooked Hammock Brewery, right next to the stomp lawn, has a big backyard with firepits and lawn games, a good place to sit while the kids wind down. Blueberry’s Grill is a reliable choice for an early dinner. The House of Blues has its restaurant and outdoor deck by the water, and the Alabama Theatre is on the same property if you want to cap off the day with a show.

Wine lovers who liked the stomp can go back to Duplin on a quieter day for a tasting. Our feature on Duplin Winery in North Myrtle Beach covers what to expect, and our roundup of wineries and wine tasting on the Grand Strand lists other places to try.

Planning Your SeptemberFest Saturday

Timing the Day

If you want to stomp, be at the Duplin tent by 11 a.m. If you just want to watch, arrive around noon when Sunburst Radio starts, walk the sidewalk sales while the lots are still manageable, and be at the stomp lawn by 1:45 for the Celebrity Stomp Off. Then take a seat for 100 Grand Band and let the afternoon run until 5.

Getting There

Barefoot Landing is at 4898 Highway 17 South, a short drive from every section of North Myrtle Beach. Windy Hill and Crescent Beach are the closest beach neighborhoods, and Ocean Drive and Cherry Grove are only a few more minutes up the road. Highway 17 gets busy on festival Saturdays, so give yourself extra time, especially if you are after a day-of stomp ticket.

Building a Full Weekend

SeptemberFest opens a busy stretch of fall festivals in North Myrtle Beach. One week later, on Saturday, September 26, the city’s new NMB Live! festival brings three stages and more than 150 vendors to Main Street. Early October brings Little River ShrimpFest on the waterfront just north of town. Our guide to a fall vacation in North Myrtle Beach pulls the whole season together, and the complete guide to things to do in Myrtle Beach covers the rest of the Grand Strand.

Where to Stay for SeptemberFest

Barefoot Landing is inland, on the waterway side of Highway 17, so any North Myrtle Beach rental puts you close. The question is what kind of beach you want to come home to.

Windy Hill is the nearest section to the festival, and its wide, quiet beach is the easiest drive back after a long afternoon. Crescent Beach is a family favorite a few minutes farther up, with plenty of room on the sand. Ocean Drive puts you near Main Street and its shag clubs, which is handy if you plan to stay for NMB Live! the following weekend. Cherry Grove Beach, at the north end, has the pier, the marsh and quiet early mornings.

Groups traveling together for the festival weekends usually do best in one of our oceanfront home rentals, with enough bedrooms and kitchen space for everyone to spread out. Couples and smaller families often choose an oceanfront condo, with a balcony facing the ocean and a pool downstairs.

Frequently Asked Questions

Ten minutes north of Cherry Grove, the Grand Strand changes character. The high-rises fall away, Highway 17 narrows its shoulders, and a left turn down Mineola Avenue delivers you to a place that still runs on tides and diesel: the Historic Little River Waterfront, where shrimp boats and charter rigs tie up along the Intracoastal and the seafood travels about forty feet from deck to kitchen.

One October weekend a year, this little stretch of docks throws the party it was born to throw. The Little River ShrimpFest marks its 20th anniversary on Saturday, October 10 and Sunday, October 11, 2026, running 9 AM to 5 PM both days — two stages of live music, more than 100 arts, craft, and food vendors, a kids zone, stilt walkers and balloon artists working the crowd, and shrimp prepared every way a Southern kitchen knows how, served with a view of the water it came out of.

Admission is $10, kids 12 and under are free, and the whole affair lands in the sweetest pocket of the coastal calendar — that mid-October stretch when the air turns crisp, the ocean is still warm enough for an afternoon swim, and rental rates have settled into their friendly fall numbers. For families staying in North Myrtle Beach, it’s the rare festival that asks almost nothing of you logistically and gives back a whole day of small-town Southern charm.

Here’s the full local guide — the festival itself, the village that hosts it, and how to build a beach weekend around the second Saturday of October.

ShrimpFest 2026 at a Glance

The essentials, straight from the festival’s official pages:

Little River: The Fishing Village Time Kept

Little River holds a distinction most Grand Strand visitors never learn: it’s one of the oldest communities on the entire South Carolina coast, a working waterfront that was welcoming boats when the beach towns to its south were still dune and myrtle thicket. The village grew up around its natural harbor just inside the North Carolina line, and it never fully traded its nets for neon — which is precisely its charm.

Walk the waterfront today and the working character is everywhere. Charter captains hose down decks after morning runs, the casino boat eases out toward the inlet on its afternoon cruise, pelicans supervise from the pilings, and the restaurants along the docks serve seafood with the shortest commute on the Strand. The oaks hang heavy over Mineola Avenue, and the pace runs a beat or two slower than the beach — the kind of place where a stroll to look at boats counts as the afternoon’s agenda.

The village celebrates itself twice a year: the World Famous Blue Crab Festival each spring, a tradition of more than four decades, and ShrimpFest each October — the younger sibling that has grown into a beloved fall anchor as it reaches its 20th year. Both fill the same docks, but October’s edition gets the better weather bargain: crisp mornings, golden light, and none of May’s humidity.

The Shrimp, of Course — and Everything Else

Let’s talk about the headliner. The festival’s namesake arrives fried, grilled, blackened, skewered, tossed over grits, stuffed into po’ boys, and steamed by the pound — much of it served by the waterfront’s own restaurants, cooking steps from where the boats tie up. This is the stretch of coast where Calabash-style seafood was born just across the state line, and the light-battered, fresh-from-the-fryer tradition is on full display all weekend. Veteran festival-goers treat the day as a progressive meal: an appetizer at one booth, a shrimp basket at the next, something ambitious involving bacon at a third, and a funnel cake somewhere in the sequence because festivals have rules.

Beyond the shrimp, the food vendor lineup runs the classic festival gamut — barbecue, kettle corn, hand-squeezed lemonade, and the full deep-fried canon — alongside fresh local catch beyond shrimp from the dockside kitchens. Come hungry, pace yourself, and know that the picnic-style seating fills at lunchtime; the savvy move is eating on the early or late side of noon and letting the midday rush work the lines while you work the music.

Two Stages, One Hundred Vendors, Zero Hurry

Two stages keep live music running through both festival days, with regional bands trading sets from morning to close — the soundtrack drifting over the docks while you browse. The entertainment lineup is published on the festival’s official site as the weekend approaches, and between stage sets, the strolling performers carry the show through the crowd: stilt walkers working the lanes, balloon artists drawing lines of patient kids near the family zone.

The vendor rows are the festival’s slow pleasure. More than 100 booths line the waterfront — coastal art and photography, handmade jewelry, woodwork, candles and soaps, beach-house decor, business expos, and the community organizations that give a small-town festival its civic heartbeat. It’s genuine holiday-shopping territory two months early, heavy on things actually made by the person selling them. Budget more browsing time than you think you need; the lanes reward the unhurried.

ShrimpFest With Kids

Few area festivals fit the family formula as neatly. Children 12 and under are admitted free, the dedicated kids zone stacks face painting and activities in one manageable corner, and the balloon-artist-and-stilt-walker circuit provides the between-snack entertainment. The waterfront setting adds its own free attractions: boats to watch, pelicans to count, and the endless entertainment of a working dock doing its work.

The 9-to-5 schedule cooperates, too. A family can do a full festival morning, retreat to the beach house for the afternoon nap shift, and still catch golden hour on the sand back in North Myrtle Beach. Or flip it: beach morning while the dew burns off the festival, then ShrimpFest for lunch and the afternoon bands. October’s mild temperatures make either order comfortable — this is festival weather the way it appears in brochures, except real.

Making a Full Day of Little River

The festival anchors the day, but the village rewards lingering. Crab Catchers, the longtime dockside standby at the heart of the waterfront, pours cold drinks with a front-row Intracoastal view when you’re ready to sit awhile. The Brentwood, a wine bistro set in a restored 1910 home a few blocks up, makes an elegant landing spot for couples turning festival day into date night. A few minutes south, the boardwalk trails of Vereen Memorial Gardens wander through salt marsh and maritime forest — a gorgeous, free leg-stretcher when the festival crowds peak, with October’s first color showing in the sweetgrass.

Anglers can book a morning with the village’s charter fleet and fish the same waters the festival celebrates, and La Belle Amie Vineyard, tucked among the oaks on the inland side of Little River, pours its muscadine wines within an easy drive. String two or three of these together with the festival and you’ve built the kind of low-effort, high-reward Saturday that fall on the north Strand specializes in.

Building the Perfect Festival Beach Weekend

Here’s the quiet genius of ShrimpFest weekend: it hands you the ideal excuse for an October beach trip, which longtime visitors will tell you is the trip they guard most jealously. The ocean off North Myrtle Beach typically stays swimmable well into October, the beaches run wide and uncrowded, tee times open up across the area’s fall-perfect golf courses, and rental rates sit comfortably below their summer peaks.

The geography favors Cherry Grove Beach — the festival is a straight ten-minute shot up Highway 17, and the section’s fishing pier, saltwater channels, and quiet morning beaches match ShrimpFest’s unhurried spirit. But every corner of town works: Ocean Drive adds Main Street’s restaurants and shag clubs for the evenings, while Crescent Beach and Windy Hill put Barefoot Landing’s dining and entertainment closest. An oceanfront home rental gives a multigenerational crew room for the whole festival weekend, and an oceanfront condo suits a couple’s fall escape — balcony coffee, festival day, seafood dinner, repeat.

ShrimpFest also caps a remarkable stretch on the fall calendar: it follows three weeks behind the SOS Fall Migration and the debut of NMB Live! on Main Street, with the season’s full slate mapped in our guide to a fall vacation in North Myrtle Beach. The area events calendar keeps the running list, and the broader menu of things to do in Myrtle Beach fills whatever daylight the festival leaves you.

Frequently Asked Questions

Festival details verified as of August 2026 via the Little River ShrimpFest official site (littlerivershrimpfest.org) and the Little River Chamber of Commerce. Dates, prices, and schedules are subject to change — confirm with official sources before traveling. Related reading: planning a fall vacation in North Myrtle Beach and the full Myrtle Beach events calendar.