Event Details
Date: Friday 31st October 2025
Times: Southbourne Green 11-4:00pm
This October half term, Bournemouth Coastal BID brought Halloween magic to Southbourne with our biggest Southbourne Pumpkin Fest yet — a strategic, family-focused celebration designed to boost footfall during a quieter trading period and anchor Southbourne firmly as a year-round destination.
From creative trader activations to road-closing community zones, Pumpkin Fest 2025 marked a step-change for Southbourne’s event calendar. With the support of our fantastic partners, traders, and residents, we transformed the high street into a lively Halloween trail filled with pumpkins, potions, music, markets, and family fun.
A High Street Brought to Life
This year’s festival was shaped by collaboration — between Bournemouth Coastal BID, Aspire Life & Sports, Immense Events, the Southbourne & Christchurch Rotary Club, and a brilliant line-up of local traders including Sugar Mango, Makla, Wight Bear, The Way Outback and many more.
Together, we delivered:
Four road closures — a first for Southbourne — enabling safe, family-friendly activity zones.
Multiple activation spaces along Southbourne Grove designed to disperse footfall, encourage exploration, and amplify economic impact for traders.
25 DBS-checked, H&S-trained staff managing everything from children’s activities to queue flow.
Indoor and outdoor locations to ensure weather-proof fun.
Weekly planning sessions with traders and BCP Council to shape an event by, and for, the local community.
A three-week digital campaign reaching more than 124,000 views.
These combined efforts delivered the strongest Pumpkin Fest to date, despite challenging weather, with 1,100+ sign-ups and a steady flow of visitors across all zones.
The Return of the Pumpkin Carving Competition
The much-loved Pumpkin Carving Competition, now in its third year returned bigger than ever.
Bournemouth Coastal BID provided 130 free pumpkins to participating traders, inviting them to carve their most creative designs for display in their shop windows. Visitors collected tokens from Rotary volunteers at Southbourne Green before following the Pumpkin Trail from SOBO Sommelier down the high street to Little Perth, voting for their favourite creation along the way.
This year saw remarkable growth in engagement:
Token distribution surged from around 200 in previous years to approximately 1,000, demonstrating strong and rising public appetite for interactive local events.
Congratulations to all participating traders, the creativity gets stronger every year!
Family Fun Across Southbourne
Visitors enjoyed a variety of themed activation zones, each offering something unique:
Wentworth Avenue: The Kids’ Hub
Jam-packed with spooky magic shows, apple bobbing, trails, slime-making, storytelling, creepy crawlies and more — delivered in partnership with Creative Kids, Aspire Education & Sports, and Hush Club.
Southbourne Green: Pumpkin HQ
The beating heart of the festival with pumpkin trail tokens, Bournemouth Goats, face painting, slime stations, music and family-friendly entertainment.
Hosker Road, Chestnut Avenue & Grand Avenue
Brimming with artisan markets, DJs, live music and hands-on Halloween fun.
Trader Takeover After 6pm
When the official daytime festivities closed, traders across Southbourne took the reins, hosting spooky specials, themed menus, events, and entertainment into the evening.
Delivering Value for Traders
Pumpkin Fest is not just a celebration, it’s a strategic economic initiative designed to support levy payers.
The event directly supports our pillars of:
Distinctive Destination
Better Business
Local Trader Engagement
Strategic Partnerships
Through marketing, footfall-driving activities, press coverage and high public engagement, the festival helps position Southbourne as more than a local high street, it’s a place people travel to experience.
We distributed over 5,000 leaflets, ran targeted PPC campaigns, promoted traders across Visit Southbourne channels, and encouraged residents and visitors to explore businesses along the entire high street.
While converting engagement such as ticketing and voting into quantifiable commercial uplift remains a key focus for future iterations, this year provided a solid foundation for refining our measurement tools and capturing trader impact more effectively.
Building Loyalty to Place
What makes Pumpkin Fest special is the community behind it. This event is entirely free for traders, fully funded and facilitated by the BID, and powered by local creativity, passion and partnership.
A huge thank you goes to:
Our brilliant traders for their imagination and enthusiasm.
Southbourne & Christchurch Rotary Club, co-delivery partner for the Pumpkin Trail.
Aspire Life & Sports and Creative Kids for exceptional children’s programming.
Hush Club for bringing the soundtrack to the day.
Immense Events (Ben & Serena) for staging and support.
And of course, the wider Coastal BID team for planning, funding and delivery.
Together, we’re building a stronger, more vibrant Southbourne — one event at a time.
Looking Ahead
This year’s Pumpkin Fest was a pilot for a long-term strategy: a vision of connected activation, stronger trader collaboration, and positioning Southbourne as a standout destination on the south coast.
With clear public demand, growing trader involvement, and measurable increases in engagement, Pumpkin Fest is becoming a flagship Southbourne event — and we’re only just getting started.
Thank you to everyone who took part. Here’s to an even bigger, brighter and spookier 2026!