Marshland Festival is back: Annual celebration packed with star-studded lineup

Published 6:03 am Thursday, July 24, 2025

The Marshland Festival is this weekend in the Lake Charles Event Center. The Louisiana-focused festival will hold two days of food, music and family fun.

Doors open at 4 p.m. Friday. General admission is $15 on Friday and $20 on Saturday. Tickets will be available at the door both days.

This year’s music lineup is filled to the brim with talent — and the music won’t stop all weekend long with guests such as Keith Frank, Jamie Bergeron, “American Idol” runner-up John Foster and Dillon Carmichael — just to name a few.

Come hungry if you’re looking for good food. The festival will have plenty of Louisiana cuisine to cure one’s summertime blues, as well as arts and crafts for sale. There will also be games for children to enjoy, as well.

Gregory Gray, president of the Marshland Festival Association, wants families to come out and have a good time while supporting a great cause.

The festival was formed in 1989 to benefit the youth of Hackberry. When the festival started, it was held at the Hackberry Community Center and they would use wooden pallets with plywood on top of them as the dance floor.

“Back in the day there wasn’t much here in Hackberry for the youth to be able to raise money, so they made this organization and the money each booth makes is theirs,” Gray said. “It’s come a long way. We used to put crabpots in a pond next to the Hackberry Community Center and we’d have contests throughout the day. As (the festival) grew, we went to Burton Coliseum. Now we’re at the Event Center,” he said.

While the festival is now in Lake Charles and has outgrown the Community Center the cause is still the same as it was in 1989. Everything goes back to  the youth – Hackberry.

Gray said popular food items from previous years will be available — such as crawfish pistolettes, shrimp on a stick, brisket and, the biggest seller, the ribeye sandwich.

“The ribeye sandwich is on French bread and the bread is toasted and the ribeyes are cooked right there at the festival,” he said.

Various vendors will also be at the festival to sell arts, crafts and homemade preserves. The booths will include, but are not limited to, jewelry, woodworking and purses. Gray’s personal favorite is the woodworking booth.

“The music never stops, we have two stages so when one band is setting up another is playing. There’s no slowing down from it,” Gray said. “It’s a good outing, it’s family entertainment and if it’s raining this weekend you have somewhere to go and you’re going to see some good entertainment.”

The festival will begin at 5 p.m. on Friday and 11 a.m. on Saturday with the doors opening one hour prior to opening on both days. There is no fee to park but the Event Center does have a clear bag policy in place.