What is the Ostrich Festival?
Before Chandler grew cotton or chips, it grew feathers. Dr. Alexander J. Chandler saw ostriches at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893, brought them to his ranches on the Salt River Valley’s new canals, and by 1914 the local paper said the birds dotted the landscape by the hundreds, farmed for the plumes on Edwardian hats. World War I ended the fashion and the farms. Seventy-five years later the Chandler Chamber of Commerce turned the story into a party, and the Ostrich Festival has been Chandler’s largest event since 1989.
Today it is six days over two consecutive March weekends, Friday through Sunday, with a national headliner on the main stage every night included in admission: in 2026, Kansas, Ravyn Lenae, Jo Dee Messina, Vanilla Ice, the Commodores and Baby Bash. Around the stage are 35-plus carnival rides, a midway, stunt shows, pig races, food on sticks and, in a fenced paddock, the ostriches themselves, which are no longer raced. Tickets in 2026 were $30 for adults and $20 for children 5 to 12, less early-bird, with VIP at $135 and rides extra.
The 2026 festival was the first in a new home. After more than twenty years at Tumbleweed Park, the Chamber moved it to Rawhide Western Town at Wild Horse Pass, the relocated Scottsdale cowboy town on the Gila River Indian Community just southwest of Chandler’s line. The last published count, 158,390 people in 2022, explains why: Tumbleweed Park had run out of parking.
For a Scottsdale visitor it is 35 minutes down the 101 and I-10, in the thick of spring training, and the Valley’s biggest family fair of March. It also carries one of the Valley’s longer-running arguments about animals and entertainment.
How to do it
Tickets and timing. Early-bird prices ($25 adult, $15 child, $99 VIP in 2026) run from the winter on-sale until shortly before the festival; standard prices were $30, $20 and $135. Every ticket includes that evening’s concert, so pick the day by the headliner. Saturday of the second weekend is the peak; Sunday afternoons are the family slot, with ride lines short until 2 and the headliner at dusk.
Rides. Ride tickets, unlimited wristbands and a $25 Fast Pass are extra; a wristband pays for itself at about eight rides.
Getting there from Scottsdale. Loop 101 south to I-10 east toward Tucson, exit Wild Horse Pass Boulevard, about 35 to 40 minutes with no traffic. Parking is $13 online or $15 at the gate, card only, in flat dirt lots that empty slowly after the concert.
Inside. Do the ostrich paddock and the barn animals first, in the cool of the morning, then the rides, then eat, then the show. The birds are the point of the name and the one thing you cannot see at another fair; treat the paddock like a zoo, not a petting zoo. Mid-March is 80 to 85 by afternoon and 60 after the concert: sunscreen, closed shoes for the dirt, a layer for the show, and a clear bag, which Rawhide requires at events.
Eat and stay. Rawhide’s steakhouse opens for events, and Kai at the Sheraton Grand next door is a strange and excellent way to end a day of corn dogs; book weeks ahead. The Wild Horse Pass casino and resorts are across the road, and the old downtown Chandler and the San Marcos Hotel that started the festival are fifteen minutes east. The rest of the kids’ calendar is in our Scottsdale with kids note.
Plumes, races and the birds’ long argument
The founding myth is true. Dr. A. J. Chandler, the veterinarian and developer who platted Chandler in 1912, ran one of the Valley’s largest ostrich herds in the 1900s, and by 1914 ostriches were farmed by the hundreds across the south Valley for the feathers on women’s hats. The war in Europe killed the market within a few years. When the Chamber replaced the city’s generic spring festival in 1989 with an Ostrich Festival, the plume era was the hook and the ostrich races were the show: riders on the birds’ backs in a style the promoters called featherback, with chariot heats behind them. In 1995, the year scenes for Waiting to Exhale were filmed on the grounds, three protesters chained themselves to the announcer’s stand and were arrested.
The races were the festival’s signature and its problem for the next quarter century. Animal-rights groups picketed through the 2010s and a petition drew more than 1,600 names. In 2017 the Chamber dropped the chariot races; its president, Terri Kimble, said at the time there was no particular reason, and the ridden races continued. In 2018 a zebra from the festival’s animal area escaped, was hit by a car on a Chandler street and died, and two dozen protesters stood outside the gates that weekend. Races were still advertised for the 2019 festival. When the pandemic-delayed 32nd edition finally ran in March 2022 they were gone, and the festival’s FAQ now says plainly that there are no ostrich races; the birds roam a designated area. Local coverage of the 2026 move attributed the end to concern for the birds’ welfare. We could not find the Chamber’s own announcement or its exact date, only that the change came between 2019 and 2022 and has held.
Without the races the festival became what it had been becoming anyway, a concert fair. The 2022 edition drew 158,390 people and $9.5 million in direct spending, by producer Steve LeVine Entertainment’s analysis for the Chamber, and it broke Tumbleweed Park: the city had added sports fields and pickleball courts, parking shrank, and Kimble admitted it was costing attendance. In January 2026 the Chamber, the Gila River Indian Community and the City of Chandler announced the move to Rawhide, with indoor vendor space, permanent restrooms and room for rides, for the foreseeable future.
The Scottsdale angle
Rawhide is a Scottsdale story: the cowboy town stood on north Scottsdale Road from 1971 until the land sold for $46 million, closed on Halloween 2005 and reopened at Wild Horse Pass in 2006 on Gila River land. A Scottsdale tourist town became a Gila River venue hosting a Chandler chamber’s party about Edwardian hats, which is how the Valley’s institutions migrate. For a family in Scottsdale in March the practical point is simpler. It is the biggest, best-produced fair within an hour, the birds are real, nobody rides them anymore, and the Commodores are included with admission.