NEWBERG, Ore. — Oregon PeaceFest will return for its fourth year from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 20, at the Chehalem Cultural Center, 415 Sheridan St., this year dedicated to the festival’s late co-founder Mike Caruso. The festival is free and open to the public.
More than 18 community nonprofits will each host a free carnival game during the event, giving families a chance to play while learning about local services and resources, organizers said. Guests who complete every game will receive a prize.
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The afternoon will open at 2 p.m. with the dedication of a new peace pole and a community walk through Newberg. The addition brings the Newberg-Dundee area’s total to more than 80 peace poles, a count organizers believe is the highest of any community in the nation. Larry Strober, director of the Rotary Peace Pole Project and a longtime collaborator of Caruso’s, said they hope to reach 100 peace poles in Newberg by the end of 2026.
Live music is scheduled from 3 to 6 p.m., with Fresh Pint performing from 3 to 3:45 p.m. and Hit Machine playing from 4 to 6 p.m. Re-Tired Recyclers will offer free bike tune-ups from 2 to 5:30 p.m. in front of the Cultural Center, and artist Angelina Octavia will paint a live original work to be auctioned during the event. Food carts will operate throughout the afternoon.
Caruso, a longtime Rotary Club of Newberg member who helped organize the event for years, died in July at age 77 after a battle with cancer, Newsberg has previously reported. Caruso helped grow the festival and was a driving force behind Newberg’s peace pole efforts. He also founded the Rotary Peacebuilder Clubs program in 2011; organizers said the program has since grown to more than 750 clubs worldwide, though Newsberg’s earlier reporting, citing the Fellowship for Global Nonviolence, put the total at more than 550 clubs as of August.
Organizers also said that, as part of the festival, Caruso’s name will be added this year to the kinetic sculpture in the Cultural Center’s forecourt in recognition of his peace work alongside former Newberg City Councilor Denise Bacon, who died in 2022 after lung complications. The kinetic statue received its first dedication to Bacon in 2023 during the peace day festival.
The festival began as a tribute to former Newberg City Councilor Denise Bacon and expanded into a broader community peace fair in 2025, Newsberg has reported. The Peace Pole movement it celebrates traces to Masahisa Goi, a survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima who wrote a global peace prayer in 1955; organizers said more than 200,000 peace poles now stand in communities worldwide.
A full schedule, carnival details, sponsor information and venue directions are available at the Oregon PeaceFest website.
