A Coalition of 30 Community Groups Beckon Saturday With Pasadena Armenian Festival

Before the stages are mic-checked and the rush to fully stock and arrange the vendor booths, the wonderful wafts of khorovats — lamb skewered and turned slowly over a charcoal mangal — will begin drifting across Victory Park on Saturday morning. 

It is the oldest kind of advertising, and on May 30, it will pull people toward a gathering rooted in a community that has called Pasadena home since 1893. 

The Pasadena Armenian Festival, free and open to the public, runs from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. at Victory Park, 2641 Paloma Street. Roughly 30 Armenian American organizations — churches, schools, cultural societies, and civic groups across the San Gabriel Valley — are producing it together, making it one of the largest collective efforts by the Armenian community in Pasadena’s history. 

It is also a second try. 

Last year’s festival was called off when forecasters predicted heavy rain. Rather than wait until fall, the coalition reset the date for spring. 

“It shows that we’re resilient,” said Arthur Kokozian, a board member of the American Armenian Rose Float Association and one of the festival’s organizers. “When curve balls come our way, we can pivot and move forward because we have a strong core.” 

The core is older than the festival by more than a century. Armenians have been part of Pasadena since 1893. By Raffi

Koroghlian’s count — he is a member of the festival coalition — an estimated 28,000 Armenians now live in the city. 

The institutional ties run deep: Pasadena and Vanadzor, Armenia’s third-largest city, have been official sister cities since 1991, one of five sister-city partnerships Pasadena maintains around the world. In 2016, the Pasadena Sister Cities Committee’s Armenia Subcommittee won the Sister Cities International Innovation Award for Humanitarian Assistance for a project that installed heaters in a Vanadzor kindergarten. 

For Kokozian, who arrived in Pasadena in 1971 when his family ran an Armenian grocery store on Washington Boulevard, the festival is a bridge. The Armenian word for hospitality, hyurasirutyun, he noted, literally means “love of guests.” 

“It extends our voice and our culture to everybody,” he said. That outward turn is, in the organizers’ telling, the point. 

“Armenians have been in Pasadena since the 1890s, and we have 30 Armenian American organizations, churches, or groups that have an office or a foundation here in Pasadena or in the greater San Gabriel Valley,” Mihran Toumajan, a member of the Pasadena Armenian Festival organization, told Pasadena Now after the inaugural event. “They came together and said,’Let’s do something for the benefit of the greater community, not just the Armenian community, but for everyone.'” 

The 2024 debut drew far more people than the organizers expected. They had anticipated a few hundred. Between 4,000 and 5,000 came. More than 54 vendors served traditional dishes, from kebabs to gatas. Performers ranged from the Element Band Instrumental Quartet to student groups from each of the three Armenian schools the festival exists, in large part, to support. 

Those schools are where the proceeds go, and each carries its own story. 

Sahag-Mesrob Armenian Christian School, founded in 1980, serves about 150 students from preschool through eighth grade. Its Altadena campus was destroyed in the Eaton Fire on January 7, 2025; the school is now operating out of the Armenian General Benevolent Union Vatche and Tamar Manoukian Cultural Center in Pasadena. 

St. Gregory A&M Hovsepian School, founded in 1984 at 2215 East Colorado Boulevard, offers a bilingual, STEAM-focused curriculum for nursery through eighth grade and enrolls more than 200 students. 

Levon & Hasmig Tavlian Armenian Preschool & Kindergarten, founded in 1992 and affiliated with St. Sarkis Armenian Apostolic Church, recently announced a campus expansion to meet growing demand. 

“It keeps the culture alive, brings the language alive,” Kokozian said. 

The American Armenian Rose Float Association — which has appeared in the Tournament of Roses Parade every year since 2015, and whose 2024 entry,”Armenian Melodies,” won the Grand Marshal Award for Most Outstanding Creative Concept and Float Design at the 135th Tournament of Roses — is taking a different role this year. Rather than running its own booth, the group will be hands-on in festival operations. 

The day itself will offer traditional Armenian dance, live music, food trucks serving both classic and modern Armenian cuisine, cultural and artisan vendors, a children’s play area, and performances by students from all three beneficiary schools. The festival’s logo distills the intent: a pomegranate, the fruit woven through centuries of Armenian art and faith, intertwined with Pasadena’s iconic rose. 

“Put it all together,” Kokozian said,”and show how we are a mosaic of Pasadena.” 

If You Go 

What: 2026 Pasadena Armenian Festival When: Saturday, May 30, 2026, 11 a.m. – 7 p.m. Where: Victory Park, 2641 Paloma Street, Pasadena, CA Admission: Free Getting there: Organizers recommend carpooling, rideshare (Uber/Lyft), or Metro light rail, exiting at Memorial Park Station. Street parking is available. Phone: (626) 449-0179 Website: 

www.pasadenaarmenianfestival.com Instagram: @pasadenaarmenianfestival