Haiti en Folie returns to Montreal for 20-year celebration with free outdoor programming

Montreal's Haiti en Folie festival is marking two decades with free outdoor programming across two weeks, celebrating the anniversary alongside Haiti's 222nd independence day and the Haitian national soccer team's World Cup appearance.

The festival runs July 23–27 at Parc La Fontaine and Jardins Gamelin. Founder Fabienne Colas launched the festival in 2007 with a single half-evening at the park's original location, drawing about 3,000 people. The event outgrew that space quickly, forcing organizers to relocate within the park—a move Colas initially worried would diminish the festival but which instead became a turning point. Today the festival draws tens of thousands in person, plus between 500,000 and 800,000 attendees annually when counting online viewership.

Colas moved to Montreal in 2000 after years of pen-pal correspondence with a young woman from Chicoutimi that began in Port-au-Prince through a church youth-exchange program. Upon arriving in Quebec during a snowstorm—dressed in sandals and light clothes—she discovered Montreal's Haitian diaspora and recognized an absence of media representation that went beyond gang-related coverage. "I discovered the immensity of my community," she recalls. "I had no idea. I said: there's absolutely nothing that shows this community in the media, except news about gangs. No, we're going to change that."

This year's programming blends music, cinema, street performance, and food. Thursday features online cinema programming. Friday kicks off the in-person format at Jardins Gamelin with performances including modern afrobeat by the ensemble Afrovibes. All outdoor programming is free.