Event Details
Date: Friday 31st October 2025
Times: Southbourne Green 11-4:00pm
All other areas: 12:00 – 18:00 and then onwards, you choose your night venue!
This Halloween, our high street is getting a spooky makeover! 🎃✨
Bournemouth Coastal BID, and our brilliant local partners are brewing up something special for Southbourne Pumpkin Fest 2025 – a frightfully fun day packed with pumpkins, potions and plenty of surprises for families, friends, and visitors.
And here’s the best bit – it’s all about showcasing YOU, our incredible traders. From eerie window displays to spooky specials on your menus, this is your chance to get creative, join in the buzz, and bring a little Halloween magic to your patch of Southbourne.
We’re on the lookout for traders who want to activate something Halloweeny in their venues – whether that’s a themed cocktail, a creepy cake, a spooky supper club, or an in-store trick-or-treat. Everything you plan will be added to the Visit Southbourne website, Instagram, and our newsletters in the run-up to the event over the next couple of weeks. Just let us know what you’ve got brewing and we’ll pop it onto the official schedule.
The Pumpkin Carving Competition – Back for Year 3!
Time: From:11am pick up tokens on the Green and say Hi to the Bournemouth Goats
It wouldn’t be Southbourne without our now-legendary Pumpkin Carving Competition.
- Bournemouth Coastal BID and the Rotary club will be handing out pumpkins for our traders to display their most creative (and creepy!) pumpkins in shop windows.
- Visitors collect tokens from the Boscombe and Southbourne Rotary Club and the Southbourne Business Association stand on Southbourne Green, follow the Pumpkin Trail from SOBO Sommelier at the top right down past Little Perth, and vote for their favourite pumpkin. Warm up with a Ghost Goal shoot out!
- Winner gets crowned with glory (and a cash prize 🏆💷).
Last year’s champs, Mark Meat’s Butchers, carved out victory – but can anyone take their crown this time- new designs must be submitted annually.
👻 Festival Highlights
Here’s what’s bubbling away across Southbourne:
- Wentworth Avenue – The Kids’ Hub
Spooky magic shows, apple bobbing, Halloween trails, storytelling, and sounds from community favourite Hush Club just for kids. Expect Slime making, science projects and creepy crawlies, Ghost Goals, Storytelling and more. Creative kids and Aspire, Life and Sports will keep your ankle biters busy for hours! - Southbourne Green – Pumpkin HQ
Pumpkin Trail token collection, Bournemouth Goats, Facepainting, music, slime-making, and family activities galore. - Hosker Road, Chestnut Avenue & Grand Avenue
A mixture of Artisan markets live music & DJS to keep you spellbound and some spooky challenges
The event will be taken over after 6pm by our Southbourne Traders Venues with plenty of spooky surprises from day into night- please let us know what’s going on for a highlight post or to feature in the Visit Southbourne newsletter.
🌟 Powered by Community
This festival is a true Southbourne effort Bournemouth Coastal BID would like to give a Huge thanks to:
- Our local traders (that’s you!) for bringing the creativity.
- Southbourne & Boscombe Rotary Club for running the Pumpkin Trail in partnership with Bournemouth Coastal BID
- Aspire Education & Sports for keeping the little ones entertained.
- Creative Kids Centre: Art &Craft work shops
- Hush Club
- Ben & Serena at Immense Events for donating staging, and seating.
- Coastal BID for funding artists, activities and promotion.
- Love Southbourne for activating some trader love- watch this space for more to come from us all over the next year
Best of all – the event comes at no extra cost to you, while generating extra footfall and shining a spotlight on our brilliant high street.
📣 Spread the Word
Promotion will run via:
- Visit Southbourne website & Instagram (PPC Campaign)
- Posters & flyers across the area
- Email campaign
- Shop window schedules in the run-up
- Email newsletters with updates – make sure you’re signed up to Visit Southbourne
💌 How You Can Get Involved
- Activate your space – think Halloween-themed drinks, dishes, events or just a wickedly good window display.
- Tell us what you’re planning – we’ll add it to the official Visit Southbourne schedule, Instagram and newsletters so everyone knows where the spooky action is happening.
- Join the Pumpkin Carving Competition – simple, fun, and brilliant for drawing visitors to your shopfront.
This is a community festival lead by the BID and the traders, and your ideas make it better – so if you’ve got a suggestion, question, or spooky twist of your own, please get in touch.
This is a year one pilot event that will hopefully be leading into many more activated events in Southbourne, joining up all our traders to bring the best of what you do to the community.
So, mark your diaries:
📅 Friday 31st October, 11:00 – 18:00
Let’s make Southbourne the place to be this Halloween – alive with pumpkins, potions and pure community spirit.