For years, a Redmond summer meant driving between things. Marymoor for a concert, Downtown Park for a festival, Redmond Town Center for dinner, and Willows Road for the Saturday Market. Four errands, four parking lots, one long day.
The 2026 calendar quietly fixed that. The World Cup Final Celebration at Marymoor lands on July 19, Derby Days follows on the next weekend, and the Cleveland Street opening wave finally put a real dinner lineup inside walking distance of the Great Lawn. If you already live here, this is the first summer where a Wednesday concert, a Saturday parade, and a weeknight sandwich are all the same trip.
The Wednesday you already have
Rockin' on the River is back on the Great Lawn between City Hall and the Redmond Senior & Community Center, free, all ages, 6 p.m. start, food trucks on site, rain or shine. Parking is at the Senior & Community Center lot at 8703 160th Ave NE and all levels of the Redmond Municipal Parking Garage at 8711 160th Ave NE. Emerald Heights sponsors the series each year, which is why it stays free.
The reason this matters more in 2026 than in 2024: the block between the Great Lawn and Cleveland Street is now a functional pre-show. Walk five minutes south and you're at the new lineup below.
The weekend the calendar built for you
Derby Days 2026 runs Friday, July 24 and Saturday, July 25 at the City Hall campus and the Jerry Baker Memorial Velodrome. This is the 86th year of a festival that started in 1940 as a bike derby. What is new this year:
- Kids Bike Parade at 10 a.m. Saturday, starting from the Opportunity Building parking lot. Same-day registration opens at 9 a.m., helmets required.
- Grand Parade at 11 a.m. Saturday. Street closures around the route run 7 a.m. to 1 p.m., with some staying closed until 11 p.m.
- Kids' Cove with bounce houses and a splash pad, $5 per child at the gate.
- Silent Disco, new to Derby Days this year.
- Urban Craft Uprising partnering on a Saturday craft fair, which is a significant upgrade over the general artisan market of past years.
- Beer and Wine Garden running both nights with live music on the City Hall main stage.
- Amazon-presented drone show Saturday night with more than 100 drones over City Hall. This replaces the fireworks-style closer of past years.
Racing action is at Marymoor at the Jerry Baker Memorial Velodrome Friday evening, including the Kiddie Kilo race. Sponsors this year include Microsoft, EvergreenHealth, Redmond Town Center, Ballard Natural Gas, and Cascade Water Alliance. Full detail lives at redmond.gov/DerbyDays.
The weekend before Derby Days, on Sunday, July 19, Marymoor hosts the Meet Me at Marymoor Soccer Final Celebration presented by the City of Redmond, tied to the World Cup Final. This is sold out. If you did not get a spot, the Downtown Park will be the natural overflow gathering point.
What Cleveland Street looks like now
The stretch of Cleveland Street between Redmond Town Center and the Eastline apartments is where four years of retail buildout finally became a coherent food block. If you have not walked it since spring, here is what actually opened:
Mendocino Farms took the retail level at Eastline, 16502 Cleveland Street, opening in July. It is the California sandwich chain's fifth Seattle-area location and its fourth Pacific Northwest expansion, known for the "not so fried" chicken and the Peruvian steak sandwich. It sits directly across the walking corridor from Due' Cucina Italian Restaurant, which was already there.
Dave's Hot Chicken is opening at the same 16502 Cleveland Street address as part of a four-store Western Washington rollout that also includes Tacoma Mall, Federal Way, and Puyallup. Local operator Sana Keshap of The Keshap Group, who opened the Capitol Hill store in 2023, is running the expansion.
Supreme Dumplings opened an outpost at Redmond Town Center this spring, sharing a space and operations with the second local ComeBuyTea. The Town Center already has Kizuki Ramen from the same group, so this is effectively a three-concept cluster from one operator.
Te-Hand Roll Bar, from the owners of Bellevue's Kuro Sushi, is targeted for August or September at Redmond Town Center per Puget Sound Business Journal.
If you are pairing this with a Wednesday concert or a Derby Days Friday night, the practical geometry is: park once at the Municipal Garage on 160th, eat at Cleveland Street, walk to the Great Lawn. You are covering three blocks, not three ZIP codes.
The Saturday morning that anchors the whole thing
The Redmond Saturday Market is now in its 50th season, having been founded by Master Gardener Georgia Erskine in 1976 on leased downtown land for $1 a year. It is the Eastside's oldest farmers market, and it runs every Saturday, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., May through October.
It is not where it used to be. The market now sets up in Parking Lot D of Overlake Christian Church at 9900 Willows Rd NE. The move added parking capacity and vendor space, and the market currently runs 80 to 85 vendors on any given Saturday from a membership pool of about 140. Master Gardeners are on site every week for plant questions, live music runs twice a month, and Samish Bay Cheese is worth arriving early for.
The scheduling upshot: on a Derby Days Saturday, hit the market at open, be at the Kids Bike Parade by 10, catch the Grand Parade at 11, and you are done with the crowds before the afternoon heat.
The rest of the Marymoor Live season
Marymoor Park is 640 acres, hosts more than 3 million visitors a year, and the outdoor concert venue holds 5,000. The 2026 season past Derby Days weekend:
- Young the Giant, Victory Garden Tour with Cold War Kids and Beach Weather, Saturday July 25
- Slightly Stoopid, Road Trippin' Summer Tour with The Elovaters and DENM, Friday July 31
- ZZ Top with Cheap Trick, Tuesday August 11
- Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue with St. Paul & The Broken Bones and Tre Burt, Wednesday August 19
- NEEDTOBREATHE, The Long Surrender Tour with Drew & Ellie Holcomb, Friday August 21
- Alison Krauss & Union Station featuring Jerry Douglas later in the run
- KeyBank Movies at Marymoor running free through August 26
The Young the Giant date overlaps with the Derby Days Saturday, which is worth planning around. If you have kids in the Bike Parade and tickets to Marymoor the same night, budget for the parade-route street closures to reopen at 1 p.m. before you head east.
One more block worth walking
Downtown Park, between Redmond Way and Cleveland Street, hosts a run of smaller weekend programming worth checking before it fills up. CHIME Summer of Music, presented by the Seattle Chinese Association, ran there on July 12 with live bands, food, and free entry. The Annual Downtown Redmond Art Walk is Thursday, September 19, from 4 to 7 p.m., pairing downtown businesses with local artists on a walkable map. Postdoc Brewing continues to host stand-up comedy nights that show up on Eventbrite as they book.
None of these are new in concept. What is new is how close they now sit to each other. The 2026 summer calendar in Redmond is the first one where a resident can genuinely plan a week without moving the car more than once, and where the food options between events are worth showing up early for.
If you are thinking about what your street or your block looks like on a summer Saturday when you eventually sell, that walkability story is not a marketing line, it is a comp. The buyers touring in July are noticing the same three-block corridor you are.
When you are ready to talk about what your Redmond home is worth in the market that is showing up for this summer, Team NSRG is here to help. Schedule a consultation and we will walk you through what is selling, where, and why.
