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The Texas Rose FestivalThe 93rd, October 15 to 18, 2026

Tyler’s rose festival began in October 1933.1The 93rd festival’s theme is “Celebrations Through the Seasons,” and its president is David Dial.2

Opens tomorrow

The 93rd Texas Rose Festival opens tomorrow, Thursday, October 15, and runs to Sunday, October 18.

The Rose Parade: Saturday, October 17, at 9 a.m., in 3 days.

Plate IVA garland of buds

The program

The 93rd festival runs October 15 to 18, 2026, with the Queen’s Coronation, the Ribbon Cutting and Rose Presentation, the Queen’s Tea and the Rose Parade on Saturday, October 17.3

For their days and times, check the festival’s 2026 brochure or the festival itself.

  1. The Queen’s Coronation
  2. The Ribbon Cutting and Rose Presentation
  3. The Queen’s Tea
  4. The Rose ParadeSat., Oct. 17, 9 a.m.

The parade starts at 9 a.m. on Saturday, October 17, 2026, at Front Street and Glenwood Boulevard and ends inside Rose Stadium.4

The 2026 court

Queen Claire Ann Malone, Princess Brynn Eve Ballard, Duchess of the Rose Growers Emmy Elizabeth Brewer, 16 Ladies-in-Waiting and 10 Attendants.5

The queens since 1933

  1. QueenClaire Ann Malone
  2. PrincessBrynn Eve Ballard
  3. Duchess of the Rose GrowersEmmy Elizabeth Brewer
  4. Ladies-in-Waiting16
  5. Attendants10

The first festivalSix weeks, and petals from the air

The festival idea is traced to Tom B. Ramey, who saw an exhibit of exceptionally fine roses at Chicago’s 1933 Century of Progress fair and was told they came from Tyler.6The Rose Garden nomination names him Tom B. Ramey, Jr.; Tyler Today names Thomas Ramey Sr., and says he was the festival’s first president.7The Tyler Garden Club had already proposed a rose festival to the Chamber of Commerce in 1932.8

“showered with millions of rose petals from airplanes”

Helen Kayser, Southern Home and Garden, November 1933, as cited in the Rose Garden’s National Register nomination

The first rose festivalTyler, October 11 and 12, 1933

  1. October 11The openingA two-day festival opened, with Tyler claiming the title “rose capital of the Southwest.”9
  2. The paradeSome 40,000 dozen roses decorated downtown businesses along the two-mile route, and the crowds were showered with millions of rose petals from airplanes, according to Helen Kayser’s November 1933 account in Southern Home and Garden, cited in the Rose Garden nomination.10
  3. The coronationQueen Margaret Copeland of Palestine and her twenty-seven Rose Princesses, at the Queen’s Ball; the Handbook of Texas calls the first queen Margaret Copland of Tyler. A company of a hundred schoolchildren played rosebuds, wind, rain, lightning and sunshine, to the theme “In Search of the Rose Queen,” in the nomination’s account; TylerTexasOnline gives the theme as “Festival Fairyland.”1112
  4. The display gardenThree acres planted with 10,000 rose bushes and 300 trees, donated by Smith County nurserymen.13
  5. The luncheonsA luncheon addressed by U.S. Senator Tom Connally, a garden-club luncheon, a lecture on flower arrangement and tours of the rose fields.14
  6. October 12The closing lecture“Adventures in Rose Growing,” by J. Horace McFarland, editor of the American Rose Annual and president of the American Rose Society, who had toured the rose fields.15

Organizers put on the first festival in six weeks; the Rose Garden nomination gives its budget as $1,800.16The Handbook of Texas says volunteers raised $1,500, and that several thousand people from 15 states attended.17The nomination counts more than a thousand visitors from outside the city, and says the organizers then formed the Texas Rose Festival Association to make it annual.18

Tyler’s 2000 National Register study names Thomas B. Ramey, the Tyler Garden Club, Mrs. M. R. Wilcox, Alma Woldert Spence and Mrs. Henry Eagle among those who started it; Tyler Today says Chamber manager Russell Rhodes was approached by Marion Wilcox and other Garden Club members.19The sources disagree on its first name: the Handbook and the Rose Garden nomination say East Texas Rose Festival, while the festival’s own history page and recent KLTV reporting say Tyler Rose Festival.20

The years between1934 to 2020

The festival was suspended during World War II, and the 2020 festival was postponed to 2021 because of COVID-19.21

The Rose Queens, 1933 to 2026

  1. A King as well as a Queen, crowned at Bergfeld Park, by Tyler’s 2000 National Register study221934
  2. The East Texas Rose Festival was renamed the Texas Rose Festival, during the Texas Centennial231936
  3. Henry Thompson, a Cornell student, built the principal Rose Show of more than 1,000 growing bushes, the first time live bushes were used in the show241938
  4. A Rose Show with a Fairyland theme, at the last festival before the war251941
  5. The festival was cancelled, and it resumed in 1947261942–46
  6. Laura Thompson took up her husband’s festival work, assisting with the design of rose shows and floats271947
  7. Queen Gail Hudson White reigned under the theme “Splendor of Lights” and was part of the first Queen’s Tea held at the Rose Garden281956
  8. Winn Morton designed the coronation, sets and costumes; Jacob Climer succeeded him291982–2019
  9. An estimated 100,000 people attended; thirteen floats and a $250,000 budget301989
  10. The festival and parade were cancelled because of COVID-19, the second cancellation after the war, and the 2020 court served in 2021312020

Viva La RosaHow it began, in 2022

It began in 2022, when immigration lawyer Ginger Young brought a quinceañera float to the Rose Parade.32Young said she and festival director Liz Ballard had talked for three or four years about tribute floats for the Hispanic community and the African American community before the first float.33

Her law firm chose a quinceañera float, she said, because “the Quincenera tradition is so similar to what we do for our girls with the Rose Festival.”34Ahead of the 2022 parade, KETK reported that the float would represent all 20 Latin American countries in native dress, with more than 40 East Texas Hispanic young women, a mariachi band, Aztec and folklórico dancers and a Tejano band.35

For 2023, Viva La Rosa said any young East Texas woman celebrating her 15th birthday that year could apply to take part, Hispanic or not.36Organizer Paulina Pedroza calls Viva La Rosa “the immersion of the Latino community in the traditional Rose parade.”37

Viva La Rosa Leer en español

Young told KETK in 2023 that when she invited clients to the Queen’s Tea and the parade, a common answer was that they did not know the festival, or

“we are not invited, we aren’t supposed to participate in that.”38

The Tyler Rose Museum

The museum and gift shop, in the Rose Garden Center at 420 Rose Park Drive, displays Texas Rose Festival costumes, crowns and memorabilia dating back to the first festival in 1933. Adult admission is $3.50 and children 2 to 11 pay $2, as listed in September 2026.39

The garden