VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — It’s a festival to celebrate one of the things Pungo does best: the annual Pungo Strawberry Festival was on a 36-year run heading into 2020.
But the COVID pandemic forced a cancelation that year, and because of some land-use issues, we have yet to see the return of the festival.
Organizers are still stuck in the weeds for 2023, and they announced this week the festival is canceled once again.
Frustrating circumstances are in the festival’s roots, though.
“Planning for the [first] strawberry festival has been crammed into a couple of months,” said 13News Now reporter Roger Hannah in 1984. “Organizers say that’s not enough time to do all they wanted to do.”
But the festival was an instant success, bringing in thousands more people than expected, despite it being on the same weekend as Harborfest in Norfolk that year.