09/12/2026
🥒 CALL FOR ARTISTS + PICKLE MAKERS 🥒
Artists, makers, fermenters, and devoted pickle enthusiasts: we invite you to pay homage to one of humanity’s most enduring, perplexing, and delicious phenomena: THE PICKLE.
We’re accepting submissions for THE ART OF THE PICKLE, featuring 2-D and 3-D artwork inspired by pickles, pickling, fermentation, preservation, recipes, food traditions, history, and all the strange and wonderful places the humble pickle can take us.
AND THEN THERE ARE THE PICKLES THEMSELVES.
🏆 BEST PICKLES IN RICHMOND COMPETITION
Bring us your finest homemade, shelf-stable pickles in a sealed jar for a good old-fashioned state-fair-style showdown, juried by the RVA Pickle Party Festival Committee!
🥒 BEST PICKLED CUCUMBER
Dill, sour, sweet, spicy, fermented, funky, bread & butter, or anything in between. If it’s a cucumber and you pickled it, it counts.
🫙 BEST OF EVERYTHING ELSE
Carrots, onions, beans, peppers, beets, watermelon rinds, eggs, fruit, okra, garlic, or whatever wonderfully strange thing you decided to pickle.
Each category receives 1st, 2nd, 3rd + Honorable Mention, plus special awards including Most Creative, Sweetest, Spiciest, Most Unexpected & more!
Pickles will be judged on flavor, texture, cut/presentation, color, and food safety. All entries must be properly labeled, safely canned, and shelf-stable. No quick or refrigerated pickles.
📅 Artwork submissions + pickle competition registration due October 10, 2026.
Pickle jars will be collected during exhibition week.
WHO HAS THE BEST PICKLES IN RICHMOND? LET’S FIND OUT.
🥒 Application link in bio!