EPCOT's 2027 Flower & Garden Festival Runs March 10 to May 31, With Garden Rocks Back at America Gardens Theatre
Walt Disney World has set the 2027 EPCOT International Flower & Garden Festival for March 10 through May 31, an 83-day run that is a week shorter than 2026. The character topiaries, Outdoor Kitchens and the Garden Rocks Concert Series all return, with concerts included in park admission and seating first come, first served. The performer lineup, dining package reservation dates and the Foodie Guide are still to come.
The EPCOT International Flower & Garden Festival returns March 10 through May 31, 2027, an 83-day spring run at EPCOT that brings back the character topiaries, the Outdoor Kitchens and the Garden Rocks Concert Series at the America Gardens Theatre. Concert admission is included with park admission, and Disney says the food lineup mixes returning favorites with new dishes.
Orlando's WFTV Channel 9 reported the confirmed dates and returning elements. Here is what is locked in, what has changed from this year, and what Disney is still holding back.
Key Details
- When: March 10 through May 31, 2027
- Where: EPCOT, Walt Disney World
- Length: 83 days, a week shorter than the 2026 run
- Cost: included with EPCOT park admission; Outdoor Kitchen food and drink priced separately
- Garden Rocks: America Gardens Theatre, included with park admission, first-come first-served seating
- Still to come: concert lineup, dining package reservation dates, and the official Foodie Guide
Eighty-Three Days, a Week Shorter Than 2026
The 2027 festival opens March 10 and closes May 31, which works out to 83 days. The 2026 edition ran March 4 through June 1, a 90-day stretch, so Disney has trimmed roughly a week off both ends of the calendar. For most visitors that is a non-issue, but it does squeeze the shoulders: early March and the very start of June are no longer festival dates, and anyone who has previously built a Memorial Day-into-June trip around the topiaries now has a hard stop on May 31.
It also sits tight against EPCOT's winter festival. The EPCOT International Festival of the Arts runs January 15 through March 1, 2027, so there are just nine days between the Arts festival closing and Flower & Garden opening. EPCOT is effectively in festival mode from mid-January to the end of May, with barely more than a week of ordinary park in between.
Topiaries, Gardens and the Outdoor Kitchens
Disney has confirmed the festival's three structural pieces for 2027: the signature Disney character topiaries, the horticultural displays and floral beds that take over the park's walkways and World Showcase promenade, and the Outdoor Kitchens, the festival's food and drink booths.
On the food, Disney's wording is that the Outdoor Kitchens will carry returning favorites alongside new dishes, which is the pattern every year: a core of menu items that regulars would riot over losing, refreshed around the edges. What Disney has not done yet is name a single booth or dish. That arrives with the Foodie Guide, which is still unannounced.
The topiaries are the reason the festival photographs the way it does. Disney's horticulture team grows them on steel frames over a season, and the display is rebuilt and re-cast each year, so the character roster is not fixed from one festival to the next. First planted in 1994, Flower & Garden is the oldest of EPCOT's festival slate and the one built most directly around the park's own gardens rather than around a menu.
Garden Rocks Returns, and It Is Included With Park Admission
The Garden Rocks Concert Series comes back to the America Gardens Theatre, the open-air amphitheater across from the American Adventure pavilion in World Showcase. Disney says the 2027 slate mixes national touring artists with Orlando-area talent, which is a change in emphasis worth noting: local acts are being named as part of the billing rather than as filler.
The important practical point is that the concerts cost nothing extra. Admission to Garden Rocks is included with EPCOT park admission, and seating is first come, first served. In practice that means the popular acts fill the theater well before the set begins, and the reliable way around the queue is a Garden Rocks Dining Package, which pairs a meal at a participating restaurant with reserved seating at a show. Disney has confirmed those packages are returning but has not opened reservations or announced when it will.
What Disney Is Still Holding: the Lineup, the Guide and the Reservation Date
Three things are outstanding, and each one gates a different part of a trip. The full Garden Rocks performer list is unannounced, so there is no way yet to plan a visit around a particular act. The dining package reservation date is unannounced, which matters because those packages are the only guaranteed way into a show and they move quickly once booking opens. And the official Foodie Guide, the booth-by-booth menu with prices, has no release date, so the festival's food side is a known quantity in shape but not in detail.
The date to plan around for now is March 10, 2027. That is the opening, it sits nine days after Festival of the Arts closes, and it is the first day the topiaries and the Outdoor Kitchens are up. We will publish the Garden Rocks lineup, the dining package reservation date and the full Foodie Guide as Disney releases them.