Kimchi & K-Food Festival

Kimchi & K-Food Festival is Western Canada’s largest named Korean food-and-culture weekend: Friday-Saturday, August 28-29, 2026, 11:00 AM to 8:00 PM at Town Centre Park, 1299 Pinetree Way in Coquitlam. The 2025 debut drew more than 80,000 visitors and 114 booths (32 food, 40 retail, 14 food trucks, 20 K-street-food, five experience zones, three sponsor pavilions). 2026 programming keeps kimchi-making, hanbok photo, K-Beauty workshops, a K-pop cover-dance championship on Friday, and a breaking battle on Saturday. Organizers have talked up a larger 2026 crowd in local coverage; treat that as a host claim and use 2025 booth counts as the floor you can re-check.

Host is Brownbag Business Community, a Canadian nonprofit incorporated February 19, 2025, with a Port Coquitlam mailing address and festival chair Jaehwan Kim. The group’s stated work is education, mentorship, cultural festivals, and small-business networking, with free membership subject to board approval. What it does have is a real 2025 festival metric, published sponsor tiers (Bronze about $2,000 through Title about $30,000), and vendor forms that asked for FoodSafe, Fraser Health permits, and $2 million liability coverage. Community vendors have included the Korean Veterans Association Western Canada Chapter and the Korean Senior Citizen Society of Greater Vancouver. Vendor application deadline for 2026 was June 30; walk-up booth asks on the grass are the wrong path.

Coquitlam concentrates much of Metro Vancouver’s Korean household map. Town Centre Park / Pinetree is the same civic lawn as Dumpling Festival two weeks earlier, and a different graph: Korean food, beauty, and retail density rather than a pan-Asian dumpling tent. If you only optimize for Downtown Amazon or Richmond’s Canada Line, you will miss where Korean operators actually gather in late August. Sponsor pavilions and K-Beauty workshops are the introduction surface. Same rule as Dumpling: this is a family festival with a vendor and sponsor lane, not a Yaletown mixer with kimchi on the side.

No ticket. Parking is the same Town Centre Park crunch; Evergreen Line to Coquitlam Central or Lafarge Lake-Douglas, then walk. Credit card and contactless are preferred. Screenshot the live stage blocks on kimchifest.ca; Friday’s dance championship and Saturday’s battle run late. Sponsorship inquiries go through the festival application, not a cold LinkedIn note the week of. If you missed the June vendor deadline, use the weekend to walk the floor and apply for the next edition, or join Brownbag’s membership list for seminar and volunteer notices.

This weekend is right for Korean and pan-Asian food, retail, and beauty operators in the Tri-Cities, people selling into that vendor graph, and anyone who wants the named Korean culture day with sponsor density. Dumpling Festival on August 15 was the pan-Asian park day. GVBOT’s Citytv breakfast on September 1 is the Downtown SME media room if you needed a weekday badge instead.