Alive Festival

Alive Festival happens once a year. It fills Leagues Club Park on the Gosford waterfront, beside the tidal wading pool, for a single Saturday in March, and everything sold from a food stall there is plant-based. The organiser is Vegan NSW, a community-based nonprofit rather than an events company, and entry is free.

A market with a single rule

The format is a market and a festival at the same time, and the one thing that unifies it is the food. Plant-based hot food stalls and vegan desserts run alongside artisan and maker stalls, live entertainment, DJs, speakers and free yoga sessions, which makes it closer to a community day out than a produce run. The organisers are explicit that they see it as more than a market, describing it in their own words as an identity, an attitude and a family, and the event is billed as fur-friend friendly with a children's playground next to the site. The 2025 festival ran 9am to 3pm on Saturday 8 March, and the 2026 edition was held on Saturday 14 March, which is the pattern to expect: one Saturday, mid-March, on the water.

The organisers are careful about what they call it.

Good to know before you go

This is the rarest kind of market listing in the directory: a single day, once a year. There is no monthly fallback and no second chance in the same season, so if March passes you wait twelve months. Check the organiser's site for the year's date before planning around it: the 2025 and 2026 editions both landed on the second Saturday in March, but two years is a pattern rather than a promise. Leagues Club Park is on the Gosford waterfront next to the tidal wading pool, close to the town centre, with a children's playground beside the site. Entry costs nothing. Bring a card and some cash for the food stalls, and go early if you want to eat without queueing, since the food is the draw at a festival where every stall works to the same rule.