Markets in Australian Capital Territory

Canberra's market scene is small enough to cover in a weekend, and compact enough that nothing is far from anything else.

Two venues do most of the work. Fyshwick Fresh Food Markets trades Thursday through Sunday and functions as the city's fresh-food hall, with butchers, greengrocers, seafood and delis under one roof. The Capital Region Farmers Market at Mitchell runs Saturday mornings from seven and finishes before noon, drawing growers from the surrounding region rather than from the territory itself, which is a quirk of having a capital with almost no farmland of its own.

Around those, Canberra runs a handful of smaller community and craft markets in Kingston, Braddon, Hall and Phillip. Several are monthly or quarterly rather than weekly, so the date matters more than the day.

Two Canberra institutions do most of the heavy lifting outside fresh food. Old Bus Depot Markets has traded inside a heritage-listed 1940s bus depot since 1994 and is as close to a city icon as a Canberra market gets, and Trash & Treasure Market, founded in September 1974, has raised more than $5 million for community projects in the decades since. Capital Food Market in Belconnen has traded on the same corner since 1976 and was rebuilt at the end of 2023 into a European-style market and dining precinct. Handmade Market Canberra, founded in 2008 with just 35 stalls, has outgrown four venues and now fills EPIC with more than 270 makers each quarter, and Haig Park Village Markets, set in a park originally planted as a windbreak in the 1920s, has picked up national awards for what a market can do with an unpromising site.

A few smaller markets round out the territory. Southside Farmers Market started in 2006 with a Canberra farmer and just 12 growers, and relocated in 2016 with 55 stallholders after a decade at its original site. Hartley Hall Markets, run by a disability support charity since 1987, still charges the same kind of gold-coin entry it opened with, and The Little Burley Market sets up monthly on the lakeshore terrace of Commonwealth Place, in the one part of the National Triangle actually designed for people to sit on rather than admire from a distance.