Get your brine on, Philly. The Big Dill®, The World’s Largest Pickle Party®, is bringing its biggest celebration ever home to Philadelphia on Saturday, Nov. 14, 2026, from 1:00pm to 9:00pm, at Stateside Live! in the South Philadelphia Sports Complex, taking over National Pickle Day itself. This is not your traditional food festival. It is a full-blown pickle party, with unlimited sampling of more than 100 pickle varieties on Pickle Row, more than 50 vendors serving everything from pickle pizza and deep-fried pickle egg rolls to pickle pierogies and pickle milkshakes, a Pickle RAVE with DJ Jay Roy, VIP pickle brunch, pickle beer and ritas, live music from Shot of Southern and the South Philly String Band, the World Pickle Eating Championship®, the Brine Chug Challenge, mechanical pickle rides, TikTok’s Pickle Priest blessing pickles, a 25-foot inflatable pickle jar named Big Brine, Jameson Pickle Backs and Evil Genius pickle beer for the 21+ crowd, and the Parade of the Pickles, where Philadelphians in numbered pickle suits will try to set a world record. Tickets start at $29.99 and are on sale now at bigdill.com.
The timing is a once-in-a-decade dill. National Pickle Day falls on a Saturday in 2026 and won’t do so again until 2037. Of every city on the 2026 In My Pickle Era national tour, Philadelphia was chosen to host the biggest date on the pickle calendar and to close out the entire tour, with organizers expecting it to be the largest National Pickle Day celebration in history.
It’s also a homecoming: the team behind The Big Dill is from the Philadelphia area and staged its very first sold-out pickle event right here in 2018.
“Over the past couple of years, pickles went from the side of the plate to the top of pop culture, and Pennsylvania sits at the center of it all,” said Kevin Baxter, co-founder of The Big Dill. “Between Picklesburgh in the western part of the state and The Big Dill in the east, no region anywhere celebrates the pickle like we do. When National Pickle Day lands on a Saturday in Philadelphia, our hometown, the state of Pennsylvania can truly call itself the pickle capital of the world.”
“This isn’t a festival where you walk around with a paper plate. It’s a party,” Baxter continued. “You can dance at a pickle rave, ride a mechanical pickle, get your pickle blessed by a priest and march in a parade of more than a thousand people dressed as pickles. Philly has always shown up for us, so we saved the biggest day of the year for the city that started it all.”
The party lands at a freshly reimagined Stateside Live!, which completed a more than $20 million expansion in May 2026.
THE PARADE OF THE PICKLES: A WORLD RECORD ATTEMPT
The centerpiece of the day is the Parade of the Pickles, where The Big Dill will attempt to set the record for the Largest Gathering of People Dressed as Pickles in History. Participants will gather at Stateside Live! in individually numbered pickle costumes from Imposta Costumes, the official pickle suit sponsor. The current published record for the largest gathering of people dressed as fruits or vegetables drew 888 people in Japan in 2017, and The Big Dill aims to beat that mark with pickle costumes alone. The first 1,200 ticket buyers will receive a numbered costume with a commemorative patch, plus an official photo marking that they were part of the record. The full count will be documented and independently verified on event day.
GRIEF IS A BIG DILL
This pickle party has a big heart, too. Imposta Costumes, runner Morgan (@picklegirlruns) and Comfort Zone Camp, which supports grieving kids, have teamed up on Grief Is a Big Dill, a campaign tying National Pickle Day to Children’s Grief Awareness Day on Nov. 19. Morgan ran a full marathon dressed as a pickle for grieving kids, a feat featured by ATTN’s We Need This.
Now she’s bringing the cause to Philadelphia. Morgan will lead a Mini Run to the party on Nov. 14 and is inviting runners and pickle lovers to lace up and join her. Anyone can support the mission by using promo code CZCPICKLE on any Imposta Costumes purchase, which benefits Comfort Zone Camp. Follow the journey at #griefisabigdill.
LIVE MUSIC, THE PICKLE RAVE AND ALL-DAY ENTERTAINMENT
Shot of Southern will perform live, and the South Philly String Band, one of Philadelphia’s most decorated string bands, will bring the city’s signature string band sound to the party with two full-band sets. DJ Jay Roy will lead The Pickle RAVE, with additional entertainment from DJ Andrew Hugh and DJ Big Country. DJ Smooth will host the VIP Pickle Brunch.
The lineup also includes the World Pickle Eating Championship® with professional eaters, the Brine Chug Challenge, the Pickle UP! interactive game show giving out prizes all day, mechanical pickle rides, and an appearance by TikTok personality The Pickle Priest, who will bless pickles before handing them out. Big Brine, a 25-foot inflatable billed as the world’s largest pickle jar, anchors the party’s large-scale photo experiences.
PICKLE ROW: UNLIMITED SAMPLING
Pickle Row brings together 20 pickle brands for unlimited sampling of more than 100 pickle varieties, included with every ticket. The lineup ranges from Philadelphia’s own Fishtown Pickle Project, Penny Pickles and Delco Dills to regional favorites Jersey Pickles, Green Kamikozee’s and Doc Pickle, with classic dill, sweet, spicy and specialty varieties from producers across the U.S.
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