What is the Kierland Fine Art & Wine Festival?
Kierland Commons was built in 1999 with a real street down the middle — Main Street, lined with storefronts and patios — and the best thing the center ever did with it was close it. Twice a year, in early November and again in February, the street fills with more than 150 juried artists’ booths, a wine garden pouring only Arizona wineries, and a weekend crowd that treats it as the neighborhood’s block party.
The producer is Vermillion Promotions, an Arizona festival company founded in 1985 that has run hundreds of shows across the Southwest — not Thunderbird Artists, which runs the similar Waterfront festival in Old Town, though the two get confused. Kierland’s debuted in 2022 and did something few new festivals do: it ranked among the country’s top shows in Sunshine Artist’s industry survey in its first year, and by 2026 it was #19 nationally and #2 in the state.
Admission is free. The wine package — a glass and ten tastings — runs about $35–$40 in presale. And the garages are attached, which in North Scottsdale counts as a feature.
How to do it
Presale the wine. The tasting package is roughly twelve dollars cheaper online than at the gate and lets you walk straight in. Saturday’s package costs slightly more than Sunday’s; Sunday is the quieter day and the better one for buying art.
Park on the Greenway side. Kierland’s garages off Greenway Parkway rarely fill; the Scottsdale Road side does by 11. Valet is $20 if you’d rather.
Walk Main Street end to end, then the side streets. Booths run the length of the street and spill into the cross streets by the plaza. The mix is the Southwest circuit’s regulars — landscape painters, metal sculptors, glass artists, jewelers — with a strong showing of Arizona-based work. Featured artists rotate each edition.
Make an afternoon of it. The center’s restaurants have patios on the festival, Scottsdale Quarter is across Scottsdale Road, and the Westin Kierland is a walk away for a post-festival drink. In February, the Bonhams auction preview at the Westin sometimes overlaps — an art-and-cars Saturday for the ambitious.
Weather: November is the Valley’s best month — 75 and clear; February can be cool in the morning. Hours are 10–5.
A new festival in an old format
Outdoor art festivals are a mature business in Arizona: the same few producers, the same circuit of artists, the same winter dates. Vermillion’s move was to find an untapped venue. Kierland Commons had the ingredients — a closable street, garages, patios, and a wealthy North Scottsdale audience that rarely drove to Old Town for art — and a landlord willing to shut its main drag for a weekend. The partnership with Willcox Wine Country gave the wine garden a clear identity, Arizona-only, at a time when the state’s wines had become genuinely good.
The industry noticed. Sunshine Artist, the trade magazine whose annual rankings artists use to plan their circuits, put Kierland in its top shows in the debut year — a rare distinction — and the festival climbed to #19 in the country by 2026. For artists, a top-20 ranking means the buying crowd is real; for the festival, it means the jury pool gets stronger every year.
Why two editions
The November show catches the season’s start — the first big weekend after the heat breaks, when Kierland’s outdoor patios reopen and the snowbirds arrive. February’s catches the peak, competing with Car Week’s tail and the Phoenix Open for the same weekends and holding its own. Together they give North Scottsdale a bookended art season on its own Main Street — which is more than the neighborhood’s designers dared to promise in 1999.