The Kern County Calendar: Annual Events Worth Planning Around

Rather than a single dated list that goes stale within a year, the Kern County calendar is more useful understood by the types of annual events it genuinely hosts on a recurring basis, because these are established, repeating events rather than one-time attractions, and knowing the season and general format makes it easier to plan a visit around them even without pinning down exact dates in advance.

Late-winter heritage: Whiskey Flat Days

The Kern County calendar opens with heritage: every President’s Day weekend, Kernville hosts Whiskey Flat Days, a Wild West heritage celebration built around the town’s frontier-era history. It includes a parade, historical re-enactments, pioneer-style camps, a carnival, street vendors, and a rodeo, and draws thousands of visitors to the Kern River Valley for the weekend, a useful anchor point for anyone planning a winter trip to the mountain side of the county (see our rafting and camping guides for the rest of what the area offers off-season).

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Spring: motorsports and wildflower season

March brings Famoso Raceway’s March Meet, a long-running nostalgia drag racing event held annually at the raceway north of Bakersfield.

Spring is also when Kern County’s wildflower-focused events cluster, timed to the season’s bloom (see our wildflowers guide for the underlying detail on where and why): Wind Wolves Preserve holds an annual Spring Nature Festival with guided hikes and wildlife presentations, and the Tejon Ranch Conservancy, based in Bakersfield, runs a Spring Celebration with docent-led wildflower viewings on the Tejon Ranch. Bakersfield’s Scottish Games and Clan Gatherings also take place each spring.

Memorial Day weekend: the Kern County Basque Festival

Reflecting the historical presence of Basque sheepherders and their descendants in the Bakersfield area, the Kern County Basque Festival is held every Memorial Day weekend, with three days of food, music, dance, and traditional Basque handball games. Our Basque heritage and festival guide covers the club’s 1944 founding and the sheepherding history behind it.

Summer: fairgrounds events and the Tehachapi Mountain Festival

Bakersfield’s summer calendar includes the Lowrider Nationals at the Kern County Fairgrounds, an annual gathering built around the region’s lowrider car culture.

Up in the mountains, August belongs to the Tehachapi Mountain Festival, a community weekend that is one of the county’s longest continuously running events — the local paper, The Loop Newspaper, covered its 61st edition in 2024. Our Tehachapi Loop guide covers what else is worth the drive up while you are there.

September: the Kern County Fair and the Tehachapi Gran Fondo

The biggest date on the Kern County calendar is the Kern County Fair, held at its permanent fairgrounds on South P Street in Bakersfield, runs annually in mid-to-late September and is the county’s largest recurring event: agricultural and livestock exhibits, a rodeo, and concerts, in the tradition of a classic county fair. Our full Kern County Fair guide covers its 1892 origins and how it’s grown into a 300,000-visitor event.

The same month, up in the mountains, Tehachapi hosts its annual Gran Fondo, a mass cycling event with multiple distance options, including a roughly 100-mile route with about 7,000 feet of elevation gain through the area’s wind farms, farmland, and mountain terrain, recognized as one of the state’s top century rides by cycling press.

Planning around the Kern County calendar

Because exact dates shift year to year, the practical approach for any of these events is to confirm current dates directly with the organizing venue (the Kern County Fairgrounds, the Kernville Chamber of Commerce for Whiskey Flat Days, or the respective preserve or conservancy for the spring wildflower events) closer to the date of a planned visit. What’s consistent, though, is the rhythm: heritage and history in late winter, wildflowers and motorsports in spring, fairgrounds culture and the Tehachapi Mountain Festival in summer, and the county’s two biggest signature events (the Fair and the Gran Fondo) both landing in September.