Ask anyone who has lived in Pinehurst a few years what the barbecue festival is, and they will describe one afternoon: tents lining the streets downtown, a punch card for samples, maybe a band playing somewhere near the traffic circle. That description is not wrong. It is just three-quarters incomplete.
The festival that started in 2021 under founders David Droschak and Peter Stilwell of Tarheel Festivals has grown into a four-event weekend spread across four different buildings, and this year, two of those buildings are not where they were last year. The Sunday afternoon everyone remembers is the one part of the weekend that doesn't require a ticket to attend. The three evenings most residents have never set foot in are the ones that sell out.
What Actually Happens Over Labor Day Weekend
The 2026 lineup runs Friday, September 4 through Sunday, September 6, and each night lands in a different part of town.
| Day | Event | Where | Ticket required? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Friday, Sept. 4 | High on the Hog Gourmet Pitmaster Dinner | Pinehurst Fair Barn | Yes, seated dinner (21+) |
| Saturday, Sept. 5 | "Q"-School Grilling Class | Moore County Airport | Yes (children 12 and under not permitted; 12-17 with an adult) |
| Saturday, Sept. 5 | Bourbon & Bites | Carolina Hall, Carolina Hotel | Yes (21+) |
| Sunday, Sept. 6 | Pitmaster Invitational | Village of Pinehurst streets | No ticket to enter; sampling card required to eat |
Friday night's dinner at the Fair Barn is hosted by Matthew Register of Southern Smoke Barbecue and Lewis Donald of Sweet Lew's BBQ, a seated, ticketed evening. Saturday splits into two: a grilling class at the Moore County Airport led by pitmaster Ron Simmons in the late morning, then Bourbon & Bites in the early evening. Sunday is the one most people already know, the Pitmaster Invitational, running from early entry at 11 a.m. through general admission at noon until 4 p.m.
Here is the part that surprises longtime residents: walking into the Village of Pinehurst on Sunday costs nothing. You do not need a ticket to be there, to browse the vendor tents, or to listen to whatever's playing. You need a Sampling Ticket only if you want to actually taste food from the seven participating pitmasters, and that ticket comes as a punch card, one sample and one side from each cook, with no à la carte option if you show up empty-handed.
The Building That Keeps Moving
If you attended the "Q"-School Grilling Class in past years and assume you know where to park this September, you don't. In 2024, the class was held at Pinehurst Brewing Co. In 2025, it moved to the Timmel Pavilion at the Pinehurst Arboretum. This year, it lands at the Moore County Airport.
Three different addresses in three years is not a scheduling accident. It reflects a festival that keeps outgrowing whatever room it used the year before. The Sunday Invitational stays on the same streets with the same general layout every year, so the muscle memory that serves you well on Sunday will actively mislead you on Saturday morning. If you're planning to attend, check the current address before you leave the house rather than trusting last year's memory.
Bourbon & Bites has moved too, just less dramatically. In 2025 it was held at the North & South Bar inside The Manor. This year it's at Carolina Hall, inside the Carolina Hotel. Same resort, different building, different room.
A Building With Its Own History
The one venue that hasn't moved is Friday's dinner, and that is partly because it can't. The Pinehurst Fair Barn sits inside the grounds of the Pinehurst Harness Track, a 111-acre facility that has served as a winter training center for standardbred horses since 1915 and is the oldest continuously operating equine sports facility in the state. The barn itself was built in 1917 to house the annual Sandhills Fair. A tornado tore through in 1932 and damaged it badly enough that it was repaired and used as a horse stable rather than an exhibition hall for decades. It wasn't until 1996, when residents formed the Pinehurst Historic Preservation Foundation, that a full restoration began, finishing in the fall of 2002 and returning the barn to something closer to its original purpose.
The harness track complex earned National Register of Historic Places status in 1992, which means the same soaring, skylit space where guests will sit down for gourmet barbecue on Friday night spent a stretch of the mid-twentieth century as a place to keep horses out of the weather. It's worth knowing that history while you're standing under those trusses, since most people at a seated dinner don't picture themselves in a former stable.
Sunday Is the Free Part, and That Changes How You Should Plan It
Because Sunday doesn't require a ticket to attend, it is the easiest day to treat as an afterthought, and the easiest one to get wrong if you assume you can walk up and eat without planning ahead. The Sampling Tickets that let you taste from all seven pitmasters sell in limited quantities, and early entry ticket holders get a full extra hour, starting at 11 a.m., before general admission ticket holders can begin sampling at noon. If your plan is to show up at noon and buy a sampling card on the spot, you may find the ones for that day already gone, particularly given how the festival's audience has changed.
Benjie Ayala, who runs the smoker for Pinehurst Brewing Co. and has represented the hometown team at the Invitational for three years running, has watched that audience shift firsthand. In the festival's earliest years, the crowd on those streets was mostly neighbors. Now a growing share of the people walking past his tent are visitors from out of town and out of state. That shift matters if you're a resident who has always treated Sunday as a casual, walk-up kind of afternoon. It increasingly isn't one.
Planning Around the Real Shape of the Weekend
A few practical notes worth knowing before Labor Day weekend arrives:
- Friday's Fair Barn dinner and Saturday's Bourbon & Bites are both 21 and up. If you're bringing a group that includes anyone younger, plan for Sunday instead.
- The grilling class has its own age rule: no children 12 and under, and anyone 12 to 17 needs an adult with them.
- Sunday's Pitmaster Invitational is open to all ages, no ticket required for the village itself, only for sampling.
- If you're going for the food specifically on Sunday, buy your sampling card ahead of time rather than counting on walking up.
None of this requires you to attend every event, or any of them. But knowing the actual shape of the weekend, four events, four buildings, two of which changed addresses since last year, is the difference between planning an afternoon and planning three days that happen to overlap with a barbecue festival you already knew about.
The festival is now in its sixth year since Droschak and Stilwell first staged it in 2021, and the fact that it keeps needing new rooms says something about how much the Village calendar has grown around it. A festival that used to fit on one street now needs an airport hangar, a hotel ballroom, and a converted horse barn to hold everything happening in a single weekend. That kind of growth doesn't happen in a place that's standing still.
If you're already living here, none of this changes much beyond how you plan Labor Day weekend. But if you're the kind of person who notices when a small town's calendar starts needing more room every year, that's worth paying attention to, whether you're thinking about barbecue or about anything else Pinehurst has to offer.
For more on what makes life in Pinehurst worth paying attention to, Rose Ward is always glad to talk. Let's Connect.
