Preston events: the annual cycle and the twenty-year Guild year

Everything in Preston's calendar returns yearly except one thing, which returns once in twenty years.

Preston's event calendar has an unusual shape. Almost all of it is annual and repeats in the same places, which makes it easy to learn. And one item — the Preston Guild — returns once every twenty years and is the reason the city owns event infrastructure disproportionate to its size.

This section describes the recurring shape instead of publishing dates. That is deliberate and it is stated on every page here: a static page promising a live calendar stops being true within weeks and gives no sign of having done so.

The annual events

Annual events carries the recurring items with their own pages. The fixed point of the year is egg rolling in Avenham Park on Easter Monday, which is the city's most distinctive custom and draws a crowd out of all proportion to the simplicity of the activity.

Around it sit the Caribbean carnival, the Park It summer park programme, Preston Sports Fest, and the market-driven Christmas trade on the markets site and the Flag Market.

The festivals

Lancashire Encounter, first held in 2016, is the largest: a free street arts festival centred on the Flag Market and the Harris steps. Preston Mela is community-organised rather than council-programmed, which is the distinction that matters when reading this calendar. Preston Pride belongs to the same class.

Both use the same three grounds as everything else: the Flag Market, Avenham Park, and the streets between Fishergate and Church Street. Knowing those three tells you where to stand for most events in the city.

• Easter / 01

  Egg rolling

  Avenham Park, Easter Monday. The city's most distinctive custom.

• Summer / 02

  Caribbean carnival

  One of Preston's recurring community events.

• Summer / 03

  Park It

  The summer activity programme in the district parks.

• Summer / 04

  Preston Sports Fest

  The recurring city sports event.

• Every 20 years / 05

  The Preston Guild

  Last held 2012, next due 2032.

• Commercial / 06

  City centre event sponsorship

  The sponsorship offer for city centre events.

A static reference and a moving calendar

Because there is no mechanism behind it that could keep them true. This is a static reference site with no live data feed, and a page that printed a date for next year's festival would be relying on nothing but the moment it was written. The events sheet sets out the same reasoning at more length.

Organisers publish their own dates, and they are the only source that will be right. What this section can give you is which events return, roughly when in the year, and where in the city they happen — and none of that changes.

How the calendar is shaped

Preston's event year has an unusual shape because of the Guild. Most cities have an annual rhythm and nothing above it; Preston has an annual rhythm and, once every twenty years, a civic event on a scale nothing else here matches. The last was in 2012 and the next falls in 2032, which means that for most of any given decade the Guild is a thing the city is either recovering from or preparing for, not holding.

Below that, the year divides into two kinds of thing. The recurring events have a fixed character and a fixed place, and they return whether or not anything is programmed around them. The festivals are programmed: they have an organiser, a lineup that changes, and a claim on the city centre that changes with it. The two are kept on separate sheets because they behave differently and because a reader looking for one is rarely looking for the other.

The outdoor venues are a short list and the same names carry almost everything: the Flag Market for anything civic or centre-based, Avenham and Miller Parks for anything that wants grass and a slope, and Moor Park for anything that needs flat open ground at scale. An event's format usually decides which of the three before anybody chooses.