It’s Dynamic: The 2026 PorchFest Schedule

Petworth PorchFest, an annual festival where hundreds of musical artists perform on porches in a matter of hours, is a volunteer-run event. It starts with a call for hosts (porches) and performers, then there’s a pairing process to match hosts and performers. Hosts often have specific preferences or partial availability, as do bands. On top of that, there are considerations like making sure there are not simultaneous acts performing too close to each other. And then people cancel, or change their availability. And then the city disapproves a block party request. Or, god forbid, it rains and 400 acts have to be re-scheduled in a matter of hours! Hopefully you’re starting to appreciate the complexity.

Given those complexities, a group of 5-10 volunteers with a range of technical capacity, limited time and budget, Petworth PorchFest’s data system has always been a Frankenstein of Google spreadsheets. And the final version was simply another spreadsheet that got shared with the public. It was tedious to make and tedious to maintain. It was hard to navigate, especially on any mobile device and it did little to help attendees decide who to see. So far from perfect, but it got the job done.

Come 2026, with the biggest PorchFest yet on deck, we decided it was time to move the ball forward. We are releasing a dynamic, online, desktop- and mobile-friendly schedule. Unlike the old version that allowed no more than a basic ctrl+F, users can now filter by genre or neighborhood corridor. The new dynamic schedule isn’t alone anymore either; it has a companion tool called PorchFinder that offers even greater functionality.