Cleveland Events

Cleveland’s calendar is built on its institutions and its summers.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction — spring, some years

The ceremony rotates between cities but returns to Cleveland regularly, and when it does the city treats it as a civic occasion: the museum stays open late, there are free concerts and street events, and the inductees’ exhibits open alongside. Even in years when the ceremony is elsewhere, the museum programmes talks, screenings and live music throughout, and the annual class announcement is genuinely local news here in a way it is not anywhere else — the city fought for a decade to be given the institution and has never stopped treating it as proof of the argument.

Cleveland Orchestra season and Blossom — September to August

The winter season at Severance Hall, and the summer season at the Blossom Music Center in the Cuyahoga Valley, where the audience sits on the lawn.

Feast of the Assumption — mid-August, Little Italy

Four days of street festival around Holy Rosary church, with food stalls, a procession and very large crowds.

Baseball and the lakefront summer — April to September

Progressive Field sits in the middle of downtown and tickets are cheap by American standards; the ballpark, the adjoining arena and the summer festival programme on the lakefront carry the warm months.

Cleveland International Film Festival — spring

Ten days of screenings downtown, one of the larger and longer-running regional festivals in the country, with a substantial documentary and short-film programme and an audience drawn largely from the city itself rather than the industry.