Impact /
Impact /
Perhaps more than anything else, Gateway Arch Park Foundation is most known to St. Louisans as the host of two of the biggest, non-sports-related annual events in Downtown St. Louis: Blues at the Arch and Winterfest.
These two signature events bring tens of thousands of people to Gateway Arch National Park and Kiener Plaza each year. They also support dozens of local businesses, artists and entrepreneurs and bring ample economic activity to Downtown.
Together with the National Blues Museum and NPS, the Foundation produces a large-scale Festival in the park’s North Gateway, featuring top national and regional blues talent.
This event is totally free, inviting the community to enjoy live music and celebrate St. Louis’ heritage as a blues city.
In previous years, Blues at the Arch was a weekly August concert series, but in 2022 (after two years of virtual concerts due to the pandemic), we reimagined it as a weekend-long Festival, making it possible to engage even more renowned blues musicians and burgeoning its ability to serve as a destination for out-of-town travelers. In 2022, we saw nearly 9,000 attendees, including Friday night and Saturday day/night concerts in addition to Sunday’s bonus Blues Brunch event next door at Laclede’s Landing.
We hope to continue to build the Festival’s reputation as one of St. Louis’ premier music festivals – and the only free festival of its kind to take place on national park grounds.
View the 2022 Blues at the Arch Festival video.
Gateway Arch Park Foundation is also proud to have hosted six years of Winterfest, presented by Bank of America and World Wide Technology.
Winterfest is a six-weekend-long event in Kiener Plaza inviting St. Louisans to ice skate in the shadow of the Gateway Arch surrounded by 70,000 twinkling lights and enjoy the holiday merriment. Winterfest also includes s’mores stations, igloo rentals, visits from princesses and superheroes, free ice skating and hockey lessons, New Year’s Eve fireworks, special guest appearances and much more.
In 2021, we also introduced the Winterfest 5K, presented by Caleres and produced in partnership with Big River Running, to kick off the Winterfest season. The Winterfest 5K is returning as an annual tradition and is the only official run/walk of its kind that routes through the beautiful Arch grounds. It doesn’t get more “St. Louis” than this!
In 2021, Winterfest saw nearly 30,000 guests over 21 days. Save the date for this year’s seventh annual Winterfest: Nov. 19, 2022 through Jan. 1, 2023.
