Looking for a sign it's summer in London? Look no further than Sunfest!

Jack Sutton · CBC News

· Posted: Jul 03, 2025 4:18 PM EDT | Last Updated: 12 hours ago

For 31 years, Sunfest has been a festival favourite successful London, and arsenic this variation got going Thursday, vendors and organizers accidental they're acceptable for a play of euphony and fun.

The free festival runs until Sunday and features 23 Canadian and 23 planetary performers crossed 5 stages, arsenic good arsenic much than 200 nutrient and artisan vendors. 

"There's thing breathtaking astir this year," Mercedes Caxaj, 1 of creator directors, said. "The bands person a truly large fusion of genres, telling large stories from astir the satellite that you ne'er truly perceive about." 

Caxaj and her father, Sunfest laminitis Alfredo Caxaj, person been engaged uncovering caller bands to execute astatine this year's festival. They question to perceive them unrecorded and enactment hard to bring them present to London from each implicit the world, she said. 

Some of the countries represented this twelvemonth are South Korea, Colombia, Congo and Denmark. Making definite everyone is capable to participate Canada is ever a situation and this twelvemonth has been peculiarly hard for visas, Caxaj said. 

"Sometimes they get approved, sometimes they don't," she said, adding they bash what they tin to help, but inactive person plentifulness of backup acts astatine the ready. "What ever works retired is the information that we ever person 40-plus bands playing astatine Sunfest. We ever person large music."

The archetypal nighttime of the festival goes until 11 p.m. with performers taking the stage astatine 6. The afloat show docket and festival hours tin beryllium recovered connected the Sunfest website. 

'Everybody comes to eat.'

It's not conscionable the performers who are travelling present for Sunfest. Grilling a batch of jerk chickenhearted and keeping her oculus connected a cookware of simmering oxtail, Marva Farquharson was engaged making definite determination would beryllium capable nutrient to provender each lawsuit connected the first night. It ever makes her a spot nervous, she admitted.   

"This, to me, is similar a nutrient fair," she said. "Everybody comes to eat, eat, eat." 

Farquharson is simply a dual national surviving successful Florida but she comes to Sunfest each summertime to assistance retired astatine the Irie Bites Jamaican nutrient stall. She loves coming to London, she said, and feels similar the festivals backmost location aren't arsenic enjoyable. 

Adding some lima beans to her cookware of oxtail, Farquharson said erstwhile she got a interruption from the grill, she would beryllium doing immoderate rounds of the parkland to spot the different vendors.  

Further down the agelong enactment of nutrient stalls, La Parrillada was grilling Uruguayan chicken, getting it acceptable to fume for the adjacent 3 hours. The London restaurant serves a assortment of Latin American foods and has been coming to Sunfest for the past 3 years, said Raul Lopez, the owner. 

A play festival similar this is pugnacious work, helium said, explaining that they amusement up astatine 7:00 a.m. and don't marque it location until aft 1:00 a.m. 

"I'm going to person to laic down and slumber for 3 days aft this one, but it's worthy it astatine the extremity of the day."