Burlington Butter Tarts & More Market 2026: One Sweet Saturday

50+ makers, a room full of butter tarts, and free admission on the Burlington waterfront

📍 Get Directions Market Hours

Six hours, one gallery, and more than fifty local vendors — over half of them selling butter tarts in flavours you didn’t know existed. Walk in free, walk out with a box.

🥧 Award-winning butter tart bakers 🛍 Artisan & marketplace vendors 👨‍👩‍👧 Free & family-friendly 🌦 Indoors, rain or shine

💡 Come early. Butter tart vendors at these markets routinely sell out of their best flavours well before closing, and the first hour is the only stretch where you can actually browse without shuffling.

Why Go Hours Vendors Essentials Getting There Tips FAQ

✨ Why This One Is Worth a Saturday

Butter tarts are one of the few things Ontario can claim outright, and the province has responded the way it always does — by building a whole festival circuit around them. The Burlington edition, run by Gotta Luv Butter Tart Festivals, is one of the friendlier stops on that circuit: it’s a single Saturday, it’s indoors, it’s free, and it doesn’t ask you to plan a road trip or a parking strategy that takes a spreadsheet.

The organizers put butter tarts front and centre by design — at most of their markets, more than half the vendors are there specifically to sell butter tarts, and a good number of them have hardware to prove they’re doing it well. Expect the traditionalists doing raisin and plain, and expect the ones who’ve taken it somewhere else entirely: Skor, maple bacon, raspberry-coconut, chocolate peanut butter. Both camps are worth a stop.

The rest of the room fills in around that. Fifty-plus vendors in total means bakers, sweet-treat makers, artisans and marketplace small businesses under one roof, so there’s a reason to come even if you’re not the one eating six tarts. And the setting helps: the Art Gallery of Burlington sits right on the waterfront beside Spencer Smith Park, which turns a market run into a proper afternoon out.

🕙 Market Hours

One day, six hours, no set programming — you come, you browse, you buy, you leave with a box. Here’s how the day tends to run.

🛍 What You’ll Find

The vendor roster is confirmed sold out at 50+ local and small businesses. The organizers announce individual vendors one at a time on their Facebook page in the weeks leading up to the market, so the full list firms up closer to the date. Here’s the mix they’ve confirmed:

🥧 Butter tarts 🍬 Sweet treats 🥐 Baked goods 🎨 Artisans 🧺 Marketplace vendors 🏅 Award-winning bakers

Vendors: this market is sold out. Gotta Luv Butter Tarts runs several other Ontario markets through the year — Streetsville in September and a second Burlington date in November are both on their calendar.

📋 The Essentials

🚗 Getting There & Parking

The Art Gallery of Burlington is at 1333 Lakeshore Road, on the downtown waterfront next to Spencer Smith Park — about a ten-minute walk east of Brant Street, and an easy run off the QEW or Highway 403.

Parking: There’s a lot beside the gallery, plus municipal lots and the Waterfront Parking Garage on Locust Street a short walk away. Downtown Burlington’s paid-parking rules and free windows have changed more than once in recent years, and the waterfront lots are typically paid, so check the City of Burlington’s downtown parking page before you head out rather than assuming.

Transit: Burlington Transit routes run along Lakeshore Road and Brant Street into the downtown core. From further out, Burlington GO connects to downtown by bus in roughly 15 minutes.

Make a day of it: Spencer Smith Park, the waterfront trail and the Brant Street restaurant strip are all within a few minutes’ walk — worth building into the trip if you’re driving in from out of town.

💡 A Few Things Worth Knowing Before You Go

🕙 Get there for 10. The first ninety minutes are the only ones where you can move freely and still find every flavour on the table. The good stuff goes.

💵 Carry cash. Cards are widely accepted, but not universally, and a dead card reader at the one table you drove in for is a bad way to end a market run.

🧊 Bring a cooler bag. It’s August. If you’re buying more than you can eat on the spot — and you will — a bag in the car makes the drive home a lot less sticky.

🥧 Do a lap before you buy. With 50+ tables, the tart you commit to at booth three may not be the one you’d have picked at booth thirty. Walk the room first, then double back.

🌊 Stay for the waterfront. You’re steps from Spencer Smith Park and the lake. Buy the tarts, then go eat one on a bench — it’s a better plan than driving straight home.

❓ Common Questions