Ask someone in Kingston where the market is this weekend and the honest answer depends on which day you mean. Say "Sunday" and they will point you toward the grass under the ferry ramp. Say "Saturday" and, on the right week, they will send you somewhere else entirely. Both places call themselves a Kingston market. Both sit on Port of Kingston land within sight of the ferry terminal. They are not the same event, and this year the calendar has stacked them close enough together that mixing them up is easy to do even if you have lived here for years.
The two are the Kingston Public Market and the Kingston Sunset Market. Same town, same general waterfront, same season, almost nothing else in common.
What Actually Separates Them
The Kingston Public Market runs every Sunday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., May through October, on the lawn at Mike Wallace Park, the patch of grass just below where the Edmonds ferry unloads. It has run this way for years and functions the way a working farmers market should: growers with produce, bakers, honey and jam vendors, and a different local band booked most weeks.
The Kingston Sunset Market shows up far less often. It happens only on the first Saturday of the month, June through October, from 4 to 8 p.m., a few minutes away at Kiwanis Park, 25882 Washington Blvd NE. It leans toward makers and artisans rather than produce, and it is built around the evening itself, timed so the market winds down as the sun drops over the Sound.
Here is the split laid out plainly:
| Kingston Public Market | Kingston Sunset Market | |
|---|---|---|
| Day | Every Sunday | First Saturday only |
| Season | May through October | June through October |
| Hours | 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. | 4 to 8 p.m. |
| Location | Mike Wallace Park | Kiwanis Park |
| Focus | Produce, food, weekly live music | Artisans, makers, evening atmosphere |
| 2026 dates remaining | Weekly through at least Oct 11 | Sept 5, Oct 3 |
Different day of the week, different hours, different park, different reason to go. The overlap is really just the name and the zip code.
Why the Confusion Keeps Happening
Part of it is geography. Mike Wallace Park and Kiwanis Park both belong to the Port of Kingston, both sit close to the ferry ramp, and both get described in the same breathless language: waterfront, local makers, live music. If you are not looking closely at which park a flyer names, both markets sound like the same sentence.
Part of it is the calendar. This year the two brush up against each other more than once. The Sunset Market's July date fell on Saturday, July 4, and the Public Market's next Sunday session landed the very next day, July 5. The same thing happens again over Labor Day weekend: Sunset Market on Saturday, September 5, followed immediately by a Public Market Sunday on September 6, which this year is themed around a Kidz Korner setup for families. Show up at Kiwanis Park on that Sunday expecting a rerun of Saturday's craft market and you will find yourself in the wrong park looking for a market that already happened the day before.
The pattern repeats once more before the season ends. Sunset Market's final date is Saturday, October 3, and the Public Market keeps running its Sunday slot the next day at Mike Wallace Park, with a live set from Harmony Wombats on October 4 already on the books.
The Rest of the Public Market's Season
If Sunday mornings are your rhythm, the lineup for the remaining weeks gives you a reason to keep showing up rather than just checking whether it is still running:
- August 23: Silver City Trio
- August 30: Over the Edge
- September 6: Kidz Korner, family-focused programming
- September 13: Close Enough
- September 20: Whump
- September 27: Brett Gadbois
- October 4: Harmony Wombats
- October 11: Crystal Springs
Bring a blanket, buy your produce for the week, and let whichever band is playing that Sunday be the reason you stay for lunch instead of just grabbing a bag of green beans and heading home.
Building a Weekend Around Either One
The two markets sit close enough to downtown Kingston that either one turns into a half-day without much planning, especially once you factor in the businesses already doing steady trade around them.
For a Sunday at the Public Market, start early. Over the Moon Coffee Roasters opens for the morning ferry crowd and makes a natural first stop before you walk the market stalls. If you want breakfast instead of just coffee, J'aime Les Crêpes offers two hours of free parking at the Port, which matters more than it sounds like it should once the ferry lot fills up on a market Sunday. By midday, Sourdough Willy's Pizzeria is open and running, an easy lunch if the market's own food vendors don't cover what you're craving.
For a Saturday evening at the Sunset Market, the rhythm shifts later. D'Vine Bistro has built a following around live piano nights alongside its fish and chips and crab stuffed mushrooms, a solid stop either before or after browsing Kiwanis Park. Hood Canal Brewery sits right on the waterfront if a pint before sunset sounds better than a full sit-down meal. And if you want something sweet to close out the evening, Borrowed Kitchen Bakery is worth the short walk from the park.
None of this requires choosing one market over the other for the season. It just means knowing, on any given weekend, which one is actually happening and building the rest of the day around that answer instead of guessing.
The Parking Detail Worth Knowing
Both markets share the same practical headache: parking near the Port of Kingston tightens up fast on any day the ferry is running, which is every day. The two-hour free parking near J'aime Les Crêpes is one of the few real workarounds locals have found, and it is worth remembering whichever market you're headed to, since both sit close enough to the terminal to compete with ferry traffic for the same handful of spots.
What This Says About Kingston
A town this size shouldn't need a comparison table to sort out its own weekend markets, and the fact that it does says something true about Kingston: there is more happening here than the postcard version suggests, packed into a waterfront small enough that two entirely different events can share a zip code and still get mistaken for each other. That density, the small-town feel that somehow supports two markets, a working ferry terminal, and a restaurant scene that includes live piano nights, is part of what makes Kingston worth paying attention to in the first place.
If you already call Kingston home, you now know which park to walk to on which day. If you're weighing whether a town like this fits the next chapter, that same density of local life, easy to miss until you're standing in the wrong park on the wrong afternoon, is worth talking through with someone who tracks it closely.
Mark Middleton Real Estate works across Kingston and the rest of the Kitsap Peninsula every day. If you're curious what a move here actually looks like, from the market schedule to the real estate one, request a private consultation and we'll walk you through it.
