Craftathon, the curated craft beer festival held each spring in Downtown Fort Walton Beach, will return to Landing Park on Sunday, May 3, for its 10th installment, with 100% of proceeds benefiting the Mattie Kelly Arts Foundation.

• The festival runs from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. for VIP ticket holders and 12 to 4 p.m. for general admission. Organizers cap attendance at under 1,000 people on purpose, co-founder Warren Bondi said, to keep the event from feeling rushed or crowded.

“We really want Craftathon to be an enjoyable event,” Bondi said. “We don’t want you to be so packed in that you feel uncomfortable and waiting in line for a sample of a beer. We want you to be able to explore and enjoy and listen to the music.”

A decade in the making

Craftathon first launched in 2015. The event has skipped two years over the past decade — one canceled by COVID and one canceled by the organizers — which is why the 2026 event is being billed as Year 10.

The idea originated when Bondi was attending local beer festivals and noticing the same lineups of core beers from major brands. At one event, he watched a volunteer pouring for a brewery struggle to explain a beer brewed to pair with a certain food.

• “Me and Rhys were chatting one day, and we jokingly said we should do our own event,” Bondi said, referring to co-founder Rhys Sharp. “We know enough people in the industry. We have a lot of friends. Let’s see who we can get and do it.”

A friend’s child with cystic fibrosis helped inspire the charitable component. The first year’s beneficiary was the Mauli Ola Foundation, which takes children with cystic fibrosis surfing because saltwater helps break up fluid in their lungs.

Bondi, Sharp and co-founder Bobby Nabors built the event around two requirements for participating breweries: bring something unique that isn’t readily available in the local market, and send a knowledgeable representative to pour and talk about the beer.

“We even joke in our invite to brewers, ‘Send your best parking lot bartender,'” Bondi said. “We want somebody who can talk about your beer and bring something cool.”

Curating the experience

Bondi said the festival has stayed intentionally small even as other events have grown into 2,500-person operations.

“We want to be the small guys that bring in the really unique beer,” Bondi said. “We want you to be at our fest and taste a beer that you’ve never heard of before.”

Over the years, the lineup has shifted some toward hyper-local breweries, regional breweries and national breweries from around the country whose products aren’t distributed in the area. This year’s brewers are coming from as far as Washington, D.C., Norfolk, Virginia, and Michigan, Bondi said. Hosting them is one of the parts he looks forward to most.

• “It’s one of those places where it’s magical when people get to see it,” Bondi said. “And once they realize what we have to offer here, they want to come back.”

General admission tickets include unlimited crawfish, an event shirt, a sampling glass and additional giveaways. Roughly 500 pounds of crawfish will be served by Evan Troxell of Gulf Coast Crawfish, who was born and raised in Fort Walton Beach and now lives in New Orleans. VIP tickets, which sell out in less than 36 hours each year, include early entry, a catered VIP tent with specialty pours from breweries that couldn’t attend in person, and a take-home item that has ranged from collaborative bottle releases to custom fanny packs and backpacks.

McGuire’s bagpipers will also perform during the event.

A different charity each year

Bondi said charities are typically suggested by friends and connections in the community. After working with non-local charities in the early years, organizers shifted to local or regional nonprofits so the beneficiary could have a presence at the event, sell bottled water and raffle tickets and meet attendees directly.

A connection led organizers to the Mattie Kelly Arts Foundation this year.

Bondi said the festival’s fundraising goal each year is at least $10,000, despite rising costs. He estimates the event has now donated well over $100,000 across its run. To streamline the process, the organizers years ago started their own nonprofit so they can handle festival permits and licensing themselves, then write a check to the chosen beneficiary.

The Landing’s return

This year’s festival coincides with the recent reopening of Fort Walton Beach Landing Park. In past years, organizers had to adjust the festival’s layout repeatedly to work around construction.

“It’s huge,” Bondi said. “That’s a big piece for us. It’s something that we’ve been eagerly awaiting and itching for every year… The Landing is as good as it was, plus a lot more. It looks great and we’re really excited to utilize the whole space and see how we can spread it out.”

Bondi said the reopened Landing also gives downtown Fort Walton Beach a chance to draw visitors who haven’t been downtown in a while.

• “Fort Walton, at one point in time, was in its heyday,” Bondi said. “But we’re still doing awesome stuff and we want to get people to come back and see us.'”

Bondi said he’s also looking forward to a shade lounge at this year’s festival featuring a THC beverage produced by Wood Foot, the downtown Fort Walton Beach brewery and restaurant across from The Landing owned by Bondi, Nabors and Sharp.

Reaching the 10-year mark

Asked what hitting the 10-year milestone means to him personally, Bondi pointed to resilience and the relationships the festival has built downtown.

“Every year we ask ourselves if we want to do it again because it’s a lot of work,” Bondi said. “But every year we remember how much we love this business. We love this industry. We love inviting our friends.”

He said his favorite part has been watching the festival become part of downtown Fort Walton Beach’s broader identity.

“Having those people who, when we first started, may have not even known who we were … now they’re our local friends,” Bondi said. “Even the ones who aren’t necessarily participating as a vendor downtown, they’re excited, and we always welcome them to join us and have some fun with us. A lot of festivals did not make it through COVID. Somehow we did it.”

The 2026 brewery lineup will be shared on Craftathon’s Facebook event page the week of the event. Tickets and additional details are available here.