What is the Persian New Year Festival?
Nowruz, “new day” in Persian, is the new year celebrated by Iranians and many of their neighbors at the moment of the spring equinox, around March 20. Scottsdale has had its own public celebration of it since 2019.
The Persian New Year Festival was founded by Lawdan Shojaee and Shideh Doerr. One account dates it to 2018, and the edition count fits 2019. It is a single Saturday, held a couple of weeks before the equinox while the weather still cooperates. The program runs from mid-afternoon into the night. There is a Persian Bazaar of artisanal goods, crafts, spices and traditional clothing. There is a tea house, there are Persian food stalls, and a beer garden pours Parseas Persian Beer and local wines. Musicians and dancers fill the stages, and the host in 2025 was the Iranian-American comedian Maz Jobrani. Families get a Kids’ Corner.
The organizers count about 15,000 attendees, and say 1,500 to 2,000 of them come from out of town, some as far as Canada. If that figure holds, it puts the festival in the same weight class as Scottsdale’s established Civic Center festivals. You would never guess it from local coverage, which mostly amounts to ticket listings.
The 8th annual festival was Saturday, March 7, 2026, 2–9 p.m., at the Scottsdale Waterfront. The 2027 date was not yet posted as of this writing (fall 2026).
Planning a visit
Find the right site. The festival has used two Old Town venues. The Scottsdale Waterfront (7135 E. Camelback Road, on the Arizona Canal by the Soleri Bridge) hosted the 4th edition and the 2026 edition. The Scottsdale Civic Center (7380 E. Second St.) hosted 2025. The two are about a mile apart, and the free Old Town trolley serves both. The year’s ticket listing names the site. Read it before you park.
Tickets. For 2026: general admission $20 advance / $25 door, youth, student and senior $10 / $15, VIP $225 / $250, and under 5 free. The festival sells through its own site and Eventbrite. A share of proceeds has gone to charity. In 2025 a percentage of ticket sales from all festival events went to Students Supporting Brain Tumor Research, a nonprofit focused on education and leadership development for young people.
Timing. The 2025 schedule opened with a 2 p.m. pre-show and ran the festival from 3 to 10 p.m. In 2026 it ran 2 to 9 p.m. Early March in Scottsdale means highs in the 70s and a sharp drop after sunset, around 6:30 p.m., so bring a layer for the evening sets.
The lineup. The music and dance bill changes each year. In 2025 it included Siriya Ensemble, Ali Azimi, Miriam Peretz with Nava Dance Collective, Peyman Salimi, LA Daf, Sheenubb and the illustrator Rashin Kheiriyeh. Jobrani’s hosting is the closest thing to a headliner.
Pair it. Early March is peak season. The festival lands in the middle of spring training, so book dinner early. If you want more of the city’s year in cultural celebrations, the Día de los Muertos festival on the Civic Center in October is the closest comparison.
A diaspora festival in a western-themed town
Scottsdale’s event calendar was built on cowboy pageantry, car auctions and golf. The Persian New Year Festival is something else: a community-founded festival celebrating a diaspora’s own holiday, much as Día de los Muertos has done since 2017. It is staged in the same civic spaces the city uses for its own signature events. In 2025 Shojaee spoke of bringing the festival “back to Scottsdale for another wonderful Spring celebration.” The festival’s materials describe Nowruz as a celebration of “family, community, food, music, and dance” going back “over 3,000 years.”
Timing is the practical genius of it. Nowruz itself arrives with the equinox, around March 20–21, when families hold their own gatherings at home. A public festival in the first week of March doesn’t compete with those. It also lands in the Valley’s best weather and its busiest visitor weeks. If the festival’s count of 1,500 to 2,000 out-of-town visitors is right, the timing works.
The record, and its gaps
The festival’s history is thin online, and what exists is mostly headlines and ticket pages:
- Founding: 2019 by Shojaee and Doerr in most accounts; one says 2018.
- 4th annual: at the Scottsdale Waterfront, around 2022, according to a Scottsdale Independent headline.
- 6th annual: “returns to Scottsdale,” around 2024, according to another Independent headline.
- 2025: Saturday, March 1, Scottsdale Civic Center, Maz Jobrani as MC, about 15,000 attendees by the organizers’ count.
- 2026: 8th annual, Saturday, March 7, Scottsdale Waterfront.
The numbering, 8th in 2026 counting from 2019, implies the festival didn’t skip a year. That would mean editions in March 2020, right on the edge of the pandemic shutdowns, and in 2021. We could not confirm whether either was held, or in what form. We also don’t have the venue for every year. Persian New Year Festival, Inc., the nonprofit organizer, holds that history. The Scottsdale Independent and Scottsdale Progress archives would supply the venues for 2019 through 2024.
Why it belongs on this calendar
The city’s own festivals mostly tell visitors a story about the Old West. This one tells a story about the city’s newer communities, and it does so on the same lawns and canal banks, with the same garages, the same trolley and the same March sun. A visitor who goes from the Arizona Indian Festival in January to the Persian bazaar in March sees more of the real Scottsdale than the “West’s Most Western Town” slogan ever promised.