St Giles Fair 2026 Is Over: 2027 Is 6 and 7 September

Update, 20 September 2026: the 2026 fair is over. The closures lifted at 08:00 on Wednesday 9 September and Oxford Bus Company has withdrawn the fair diversions from its service updates.

One thing to be aware of if you are still finding 2026 information that reads as though the fair is coming: Oxford City Council’s own event page has not been updated. Re-read on 20 September, twelve days after the fair closed, it still says “in 2026, the fair will be held on Monday 7 and Tuesday 8 September” and still describes the road closures in the future tense. The fair has happened. What follows is the record of the 2026 arrangements, and the 2027 dates are in the next section. For what is closed in Oxford now, see our roadworks and travel page.

St Giles’ Fair takes over the middle of Oxford on Monday 7 and Tuesday 8 September, from 11am to 11pm on both days, according to Oxford City Council.

The road closures start a day and a half before that. Oxfordshire County Council’s statutory notice, published in the Oxford Times on 20 August, sets the traffic measures to run from 00:01 on Sunday 6 September until 08:00 on Wednesday 9 September.

When is St Giles Fair 2027? Monday 6 and Tuesday 7 September

You do not have to wait for the city council to announce it. The fair’s date is set by a rule that has held since the nineteenth century: St Giles’ Fair is on the Monday and Tuesday following the first Sunday after St Giles’ Day, and St Giles’ Day is always 1 September.

That rule produces 2026’s dates exactly. 1 September 2026 was a Tuesday, the first Sunday after it was 6 September, and the fair ran on Monday 7 and Tuesday 8 September. Run the same rule forward:

The two extremes are a useful sanity check on the rule. When 1 September is a Saturday the fair lands as early as it can, on the 3rd and 4th, which is 2029. When 1 September is a Sunday it lands as late as it can, on the 9th and 10th, because the first Sunday after St Giles’ Day is then the 8th. That is 2030.

Two caveats. The dates are fixed by custom rather than by statute, so the council still confirms them formally each year, and the road closure dates are a separate thing: Oxfordshire County Council makes a traffic order for each fair, and in 2026 it ran from 00:01 on the Sunday before to 08:00 on the Wednesday after. Expect the 2027 order to cover Sunday 5 September to Wednesday 8 September, but do not plan a delivery around it until the notice is published in the Oxford Times, which in 2026 happened on 20 August, about a fortnight ahead.

The fair is four hundred years old, and it did not start as a funfair

Worth knowing if you are wondering why a city centre closes for two days in September. On Oxford City Council’s own account, the fair originated in 1625 as a parish festival honouring St Giles, which makes 2025 its four hundredth year.

It has changed shape twice since. It was a toy fair in the eighteenth century, then became a children’s fair in the early nineteenth. The funfair everyone recognises now is a Victorian invention: better transport brought far more visitors, and mechanical engineering produced the first ride prototypes, so the rides took over from the stalls (Oxford City Council).

That history is also why the date rule is a custom rather than a statute, and why the council still confirms it formally each year rather than simply publishing the next decade the way the table above does.

St Giles Fair 2026: dates, times and what it costs

St Giles Fair 2026 is on Monday 7 and Tuesday 8 September, 11am to 11pm on both days. It is held in the street itself, not in a park or a field, which is why the closures below are so wide.

There is no entry charge. You walk in off Broad Street or Beaumont Street and pay per ride, and individual rides run at roughly £5 to £20 depending on the machine. Recent years have brought the reverse bungee, a 100ft star flyer, dodgems, a ghost train, a carousel, a funhouse and toy trains for smaller children, along with the usual burger, doughnut and candyfloss stalls.

Two practical points about timing. The fair opens at 11am, so the first two hours on the Monday are much the quietest it gets, which is the window to use if you are bringing a young child or anyone who will not enjoy a crowd. And it runs to 11pm both nights, so the last hour is an adult crowd rather than a family one.

Getting there is the awkward part this year. Woodstock Road and Banbury Road are shut into St Giles, Botley Road is still closed until 20 September, and buses that normally run through St Giles are on Broad Street. Coming by train and walking up from the station, or using a park and ride from the east or south, avoids all of it.

Oxford City Council traces the fair to 1625, when it began as a parish festival for St Giles. It became a toy fair in the 1700s, a children’s fair in the early 1800s, and the mechanical funfair it is now during the Victorian period, when the railways made it easy for showmen to travel.

Which roads close

The notice lists these prohibitions of vehicles:

• St Giles, closed. Pay and display parking and the taxi rank are suspended
• Magdalen Street East and West, closed
• Banbury Road (A4165), closed between Parks Road and Keble Road, except the east side for vehicles showing a St Giles Fair parking permit
• Woodstock Road (A4144), closed between St Giles and Observatory Street, except fairground parking on the east side between Observatory Street and the Royal Oak
• Beaumont Street, closed between St John Street and St Giles. Pay and display and loading bays are suspended, with a 10 metre taxi space kept on the south side, 5 metres from Gloucester Street
• Keble Road, closed except for permitted fairground vehicles. Residents’ permit parking is suspended
• Pusey Street, closed between St Giles and St John Street, frontage access only
• Bevington Road, closed at the Woodstock Road junction
• Little Clarendon Street, closed for its entire length, access to premises from Walton Street only. It is being used as the access and staging area for emergency services

Two further changes are not closures but will catch drivers out. Traffic coming out of Parks Road into Banbury Road will only be able to turn right, that is northwards, away from the city. On Broad Street, the No Access bollards will be lowered so that bus and taxi services can transfer there from St Giles, and the loading bays and the street traders’ bay on the south side are suspended.

The county names the alternative through route as Worcester Street, Walton Street, Kingston Road and St Margaret’s Road, in both directions.

Parking, buses and taxis

Disabled persons’ parking is suspended in St Giles, Broad Street, Keble Road and Pusey Street, and relocated to Blackhall Road.

Bus and taxi services move out of St Giles and onto Broad Street. As of 27 August the bus operators had not published their route by route diversions for this year’s fair: Oxford Bus Company’s service updates page carried nothing on St Giles Fair, so check it and Stagecoach’s Oxfordshire updates nearer the time rather than assuming last year’s diversion still applies.

The county says access advice for properties inside the closed area has been sent in writing to residents, colleges and businesses, and that marshals will supervise it.

One legal detail worth knowing

The notice is worded as an intention. It says the county council “intends to make” the Oxfordshire County Council (Oxford, St Giles Fair) (Special Event) Order 2026 under section 16A of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984, with the order dated 1 September and coming into force on 6 September. The fair is promoted by the Showmen’s Guild of Great Britain. The reference is S26-034, and the full particulars are on the county’s event orders page.

Two other things are happening in the same fortnight

Botley Road is still shut. Network Rail confirmed on 29 July that it will reopen to traffic on Sunday 20 September, two weeks after the fair, so the western approach to the city centre is not available during it.

And this is the last St Giles’ Fair under the temporary congestion charge. The traffic filter trial starts on Monday 28 September, and the £5 daily charge ends the same day. We have set out what changes on our Oxford roadworks and travel page.

What it means for you

• If you drive through north Oxford, the Woodstock Road and Banbury Road routes into St Giles are gone from midnight on Saturday night. Use Worcester Street, Walton Street, Kingston Road and St Margaret’s Road.
• If you park in St Giles, Beaumont Street or Little Clarendon Street, move the car before 00:01 on Sunday 6 September. Residents’ permit parking on Keble Road is suspended too.
• If you hold a blue badge, the bays in St Giles, Broad Street, Keble Road and Pusey Street are gone for the duration. Blackhall Road is the replacement.
• If you are catching a bus, expect to board on Broad Street rather than St Giles, and check the operator’s own page before you travel.
• If you are going to the fair, it is open 11am to 11pm on both days. There is more to do in the city that week on our things to do in Oxford page.