The Atlantic Balloon Fiesta, a major annual festival in the Sussex area, says it was denied a grant from the province’s tourism ministry because it would not sell tickets.
The hot-air balloon festival, celebrating its 40th year in 2026, runs annually the weekend after Labour Day, and is set this year for Sept. 9 to 13. Last year the festival drew more than 60,000 attendees over four days to the community of 6,544.
Festival spokesperson Alannah Pearson said Thursday that the festival had previously received funding from the province’s Invitation Festival Fund, but it was told this year that the rules had changed, requiring festivals to charge admission to qualify. Those changes were part of requirements to prove that attendees were coming from out-of-region by collecting postal codes as an accountability measure, according to provincial Tourism Minister Isabelle Thériault.
“As we are a family-oriented event, we will never charge admission to our grounds, we are no longer eligible for that program,” Pearson said.
Pearson said funding “fluctuates” each year but they had received around $11,000 to $13,000 annually, making the province “one of our larger funders,” saying it’s something they have been “super grateful” for. She said the festival costs about $150,000 to $200,000 annually to put on, and said an amount like that “makes an impact on our plans.”
“We were hoping to do something special for our 40th,” Pearson said. “When we received news that that funding wasn’t coming through, it did impact some of our decisions.”
The festival is “an event that runs on propane,” Pearson said, and in addition to twice-daily balloon flights featuring more than two dozen pilots, the festival offers a bandshell, midway and vendor village.
She said after reaching out to the province to ask for feedback, they were directed to apply through the Community Investment Fund, a program from the province’s Regional Development Corporation that makes money available to MLAs to support festivals and community growth.
Pearson said that it’s “unfortunate” they weren’t eligible, but said they reached out to Sussex-Three Rivers Progressive Conservative MLA Tammy Scott-Wallace and will be receiving a grant from the community fund, and they have received support from some local businesses to help close the gap. She said she considered other grants, but “the nature of our event doesn’t fit a perfect little box as far as funding goes.”
“It’s a huge benefit to our community and it’s a huge deal to us, so we’re just thankful that we have sponsorship to back us up,” Pearson said, saying the community grant amounted to $7,500
Scott-Wallace told Brunswick News Thursday that she found out about the tourism grant when the festival reached out for support.
She said the festival fund had been an initiative she began as tourism minister in the former Higgs’ government to support events after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since there is no “ticket booth” to festival grounds, she said in the past, the department had solved attendance questions by using a digital audience capture.
“This is one of Atlantic Canada’s biggest festivals, and the most iconic in a way, it draws a lot of people to Sussex,” Scott-Wallace said. “For the province to completely cut off something that’s so important to New Brunswick is just astonishing, to be honest.”
She said the region had been affected by Agropur’s announcement in May that it was closing its Sussex plant, which followed a $2.3 million repayable loan from the province to support expansion in Miramichi.
“Another hit to my community that leaves me very very frustrated,” Scott-Wallace said.
Thériault said the tourism festival fund is one of three government funds supporting festivals, alongside a fund for cultural and artistic events and the Community Investment Fund.
“The goal of this program is to attract people from the outside to New Brunswick so they can spend money,” Thériault said.
She said that they had made changes to the tourism festival fund for this year including requirements to have a minimum of two consecutive days, prove that 15 per cent of attendees are coming from outside of a 75-kilometre radius, collect at least 250 postal codes from attendees, as well as requiring that festivals sell tickets.
The fund has $750,000 available, with $550,000 of that during its summer window, according to spokesperson Jennifer Vienneau, adding that grant applications opened at the beginning of April. Thériault said grants can cover up to $25,000 per event.
“The staff at the department has had several discussions with them, they were notified in advance that they would have to sell tickets,” Thériault said, adding that they had also not collected postal codes. “They decided to stay free, and we respect that decision.”
She said that without selling tickets and collecting postal codes, they were told they could apply through the Community Investment Fund, which she said is available to free events throughout the province.
The data collection is necessary to be accountable to taxpayers, Thériault said, noting an auditor general’s report released in June that called out the government for “weak monitoring” and a lack of performance measurement regarding grants from the ministry of tourism, culture and heritage.
“The auditor general … told us we need to have clear criteria, clear process, we need to collect data to give away grants, so we need to respect that,” Thériault said.
She said that the Community Investment Fund offers $75,000 for each MLA to distribute how they want, and it’s up to each MLA to decide how to use the money. She pointed out that the festival had received $11,000, and would be eligible to receive as much as $10,000 for the community fund.
The three municipalities of the Kings Regional Service Commission, plus the Kings Rural District, had a total population of 22,203 in 2025, or a little more than a third of the festival’s attendance estimate for last year. Despite those numbers, Thériault said it’s “hard for us” to prove that attendees are coming from outside the region without data to back it up.
“We’re trying to do the best we can and support the festival the best we can, but at the same time we need to work with criteria, these are grant programs,” the minister said. “We want to help the festival thrive, we have a tourism strategy, we want to grow the revenues, but to grow the revenues, we need to have the systems in place.”
She said that Sussex is a “beautiful region” with a great arts and culture scene, saying that they had increased arts and culture core funding. She noted that the Sussex Fundy Fest had its funding increased from $3,000 to $25,000 “because of the good work they do,” saying they met the grant criteria.
Pearson said other than grant issues, most planning is “going off without a hitch.”
“We’ve got some big plans, we’ve got a ton of really incredible pilots scheduled to join us, we’ve got some new balloons joining us,” she said. “We’re really excited to see those in the sky and as always every year, we’re trying to improve a little bit … and have something for everyone to do on the grounds.
“Same as every year, as long as the weather holds out, we’re going to have a really great weekend.”
By Andrew Bates, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Original Published on Jun 30, 2026 at 07:10
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