By Katie Extine, Staff Writer
Each summer, Knoxville hosts a day full of delicious food, traditional dance, and enough collectables to fill many shelves. Knox Asian Fest, held in downtown Knoxville, is one of the largest festivals in Knox County. Each year, vendors set up booths and showcase multiple aspects of Asian cultures.
Knox Asian Fest is put on by the Asian Culture Center of Tennessee, or ACCTN. The organization was formed in 2014, the same year as the first festival. That first festival was held in Krutch Park, right outside of Market Square; it featured only a handful of vendors representing around five Asian countries, but it was popular enough to suggest more festivals in the future. Fast forward to this year, and it now occupies the two great lawns in World’s Fair Park; it features at least 50 food vendors, 100 commercial vendors, two performance stages, and at least 14 Asian countries continue to be represented. According to the Asian Culture Center of Tennessee’s impact report published in October 2025, Knox Asian Fest brings in around $4.8 million. It draws 38,000 visitors, with attendees from as far as Detroit and New York City.
This year’s festival featured performances representing Japan, China, South Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines, Bangladesh, and Thailand. Many of these performances are based on the different types of traditional dances or musical shows from the country, as well as a K-pop cover group and a fashion show. The festival opened with a parade that ran through the center of the World’s Fair Park grounds, down and around the vendors. This parade gave the other performances a chance to be seen throughout the day. One of the notable performances each year is the “Wah Lum Kung Fu Dragon and Lion Dance”, an iconic representation of Chinese and martial arts culture. There is even a booth where you can check out the dragon puppet used during the dance, and you can even learn more about the dance from the performers themselves!
The food and commercial vendors represented bring in even more countries, adding India, Taiwan, Malaysia, Myanmar, Pakistan, and Vietnam to the list. With multiple types of culinary creations, ranging from savory dishes to sweet treats, the food vendors can introduce thousands of people to new cuisines and even local restaurants for them to support. Alongside the food, the commercial vendors offer a plethora of traditional crafts, blind bag collectables, figurines, and many others. If you didn’t want material goods, the festival also had the perfect solution with Henna by Nia along with another henna station at the India associate booth.
One vendor that stuck out to my friends and me while we attended the festival was selling metal wire art. The booth had bonsai trees, dragons, and keychains sculpted from modeling wire, a colorful and new way of sculpting that we had not seen before. A booth I stop by every time is Ploghvey KPOP. They bring the newest K-pop album releases to the festival, and I always end up making my friends listen to one on the way home. Another interesting thing we saw while attending was a booth selling real bonsai trees and showing attendees how to care for one if they decided to buy one. “Every bonsai is a tree, but not every tree is a bonsai.” is something we internalized while walking around.
Every festival we try to eat at different food trucks or booths; one year we got the chance to try Korean corn dogs, another we got bahn-mi, and this year we got hibachi! Trying different foods gives us more restaurants and cafes to meet, eat, and hang out at after the festival is over. A personal favorite of mine was all the desserts and sweets I got to try, with the Kooky Cookies booth having a ube-flavored cookie as well as a mango cake, and Girls Gotta Eat Good having ube cheesecake brownies; it felt like my own Candyland.
All in all, Knox Asian Fest is an opportunity for people to experience Asian cultures through food, mementos, art, and performance. Each year the festival continues to grow and bring even more people together, along with promoting local businesses. As the Asian Culture Center of Tennessee hosts more festivals and events in the years to come, the interest in the represented cultures continues to amplify the local culture it builds within our community!
