Always an extremely popular event, crowds were up at this year's Parksville Beach Festival, led by the annual sand sculpting competition (Alex Rawnsley/NanaimoNewsNOW)

By Ian Holmes

popular event

New venue? No problem for Parksville Beach Festival attendance figures

Aug 19, 2025 | 5:27 AM

PARKSVILLE — Moving to a lower traffic site with fewer conflicts didn’t harm Parksville Beach Festival attendance numbers.

In fact, traffic went up.

On Monday, Aug 18 the society a little more than 119,000 people entered the competition area gates to view 22 world-class sand-sculptures over the course of the five-and-a-half week-long festival, surpassing 2024 figures by just shy of 4,000 visitors.

Society event manager Wendy Sears said relocating to the quieter, southern portion of the Community Park provided more flexibility.

Aerial view of the sand-sculpting venue unveiled for the recently completed Parksville Beach Festival (Google/NanaimoNewsNOW illustration)

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“The new site is excellent, it’s so much easier to get in; being able to get into the back of the park and bring those sand trucks in is a lot easier now,” Sears told NanaimoNewsNOW, who noted greatly increased accessibility was a key reason for the venue change.

After being in the same tight quarters for many years at the park’s epicentre, Sears said there is room to expand the popular sand-sculpting element of the festival moving forward.

She acknowledged perhaps adjusting their footprint could improve the user experience.

“It could be a little wider I think, but the City is willing to work with us on making improvements as we move forward and we also have the opportunity in that site to potentially expand.”

Consistent foot-traffic fills the sand sculpture competition area, particularly on peak periods during the weekends. (Alex Rawnsley/NanaimoNewsNOW)

Attracting 119,092 visitors to view the sand sculptures is no small feat during uncertain economic conditions, representing the highest attendance figures since the 2018 event when nearly 126,000 people showed up.

This year’s impressive attendance results came despite the sand-sculpting exhibits having to close on Thursday, Aug. 14 due to poor air quality, as well as the following evening’s cancellation of a festival concert due to inclement weather.

An iconic event since the early 1980’s, Parksville Beach Festival drew a record 133,000 visitors in 2016.

Sears said cresting the 130,000 visitors plateau again as they did in 2016 and 2017 is certainly possible, but wouldn’t be easy in an era with so many competing summer-time options.

“I think it has a lot to do with the fact that there’s a lot more events on Vancouver Island now than there used to be at that time. People I guess are picking and choosing what they spend their time going to.”

Life-like sand sculptures draw visitors from around the world to Parksville’s waterfront. (Alex Rawnsley/NanaimoNewsNOW)

This year’s People’s Choice awards saw the solo winner go to Manuel Campos of Colombia with the creation Role Reversal, while the doubles People’s Choice honourees were Sue McGrew (USA) and Dimitry Klimenko (Russia) with their entry Peace Amid the Storm.

Organizers will go through all the money collected and calculate their annual donation back into the community this fall.

Twenty-four non-profit organizations, whose members worked the entrance gate throughout the five and a half weeks, will receive a donation from the festival society.

Over the last 25 years, more than $1.2 million has been pumped back into the Oceanside area for community initiatives.

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