Skip to content
The Canadian Tulip Festival is one of Ottawa’s signature annual events — the world’s largest tulip festival, with over a million tulips blooming across the city each May. It draws hundreds of thousands of visitors, and it comes with a genuinely unusual origin story rooted in a Dutch princess’s wartime exile in Ottawa. Here’s when to go, where to see the best displays, and what to expect.
📋 Quick Navigation — Jump to a Section
Festival Overview
The Canadian Tulip Festival is the world’s largest tulip festival, with more than a million tulips planted across Ottawa each spring. It runs for about ten days each May, centred on Commissioners Park at Dow’s Lake, with additional displays scattered through the city’s parks and along the Rideau Canal. It’s free to walk through the main displays.
History
🌷 A Wartime Gift
During the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, Princess Juliana fled to Ottawa with her daughters. While there, she gave birth to Princess Margriet — and part of the Ottawa Civic Hospital was briefly declared Dutch soil so the newborn princess would hold Dutch citizenship. Canadian forces later took part in liberating the Netherlands. After returning home in 1945, Princess Juliana sent Ottawa 100,000 tulip bulbs as a gesture of gratitude, and the Dutch royal family has sent an annual gift of tulips ever since. Photographer Malak Karsh, taken by the display, proposed a festival to the Ottawa Board of Trade, and the first Canadian Tulip Festival ran in 1953. Ottawa officially adopted the tulip as its city flower in 2001.
When to Go
The festival typically runs in mid-May, generally in the ten-day window around the third weekend of the month — the 2026 edition ran May 8-18. Exact dates for future years are announced by the festival closer to the season, since peak bloom depends on that year’s weather. Aim for the middle weekend of the festival for the fullest bloom, and arrive early on weekends to beat both crowds and midday heat.
Where to See Tulips
Tulip beds are planted across the city, but a handful of spots concentrate the display:
🌷 Commissioners Park & Dow’s Lake
The festival’s main site and easily its best display — hundreds of thousands of tulips along the lakeshore, with the Dow’s Lake pavilion nearby for food and rest. This is the one to prioritize if you only see one spot.
🏛️ Major’s Hill Park
Right beside the Chateau Laurier and Parliament Hill, this display puts tulips against one of the city’s best skyline backdrops — a good stop if you’re already downtown.
🚣 Along the Rideau Canal
Smaller plantings line stretches of the canal, making a canal walk during the festival a pleasant way to see tulips without the crowds of the main park.
Events & Entertainment
Beyond the flower beds, the festival typically includes a market with local vendors, live entertainment on weekends, and self-guided tour partnerships with downtown venues like the Rideau Centre. Programming details and specific acts are announced closer to each year’s festival, so check the official festival site for the current year’s schedule before you go.
Tips for Visiting
📸 Best time of day for photos
Early morning gives the softest light and the thinnest crowds — the park fills up fast on weekend afternoons.
🚶 Avoiding crowds
Weekday mornings are noticeably quieter than weekends. If you can only go on a weekend, arrive before 9am.
🚴 Combine it with the canal
Commissioners Park sits right on the Rideau Canal, so pairing the tulip displays with a canal walk or bike ride is an easy way to extend the visit.
Where to Stay
The festival books up hotels across the city, especially downtown — see Best Hotels in Ottawa for picks by neighbourhood, and the ByWard Market Food Guide for where to eat afterward.
The map below shows live hotel availability and pricing in Ottawa for your dates.