Cheerwine Festival is back! The annual event will return to Salisbury this spring.

The annual Cheerwine Festival is set to return to downtown Salisbury this spring, bringing live music, family-friendly entertainment and plenty of Cheerwine-inspired food and drinks to fans of the cherry soda.

The festival will be held from noon to 10 p.m. on May 21.

Festival organizers say the full musical lineup, along with additional details about the outdoor festival, will be released in the coming weeks.

“We first hosted the Cheerwine Festival in 2017 for our 100th anniversary, and now it’s become an annual event to celebrate our tremendous fans and the City of Salisbury, and pay homage to the unique tastes, sights and sounds rooted in the Carolinas,” Joy Ritchie Harper, vice president of marketing for Cheerwine and fifth-generation founding family member said in a news release.

Since the inaugural event, the Cheerwine Festival has boosted the city’s economy with an estimated impact of more than $1.5 million.

This will be the first in-person event since 2019. In 2020 the event was held virtually, and last year the event was canceled because of the pandemic.

This story was originally published February 18, 2022 at 6:15 AM with the headline "Cheerwine Festival is back! The annual event will return to Salisbury this spring.."