{"id":20,"date":"2026-03-26T07:46:26","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T07:46:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/statesvilletimes.com\/?p=20"},"modified":"2026-03-26T07:46:26","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T07:46:26","slug":"carolina-balloonfest-returns-to-statesville-with-record-lineup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/statesvilletimes.com\/?p=20","title":{"rendered":"Carolina BalloonFest Returns to Statesville with Record Lineup"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The 53rd annual Carolina BalloonFest is set to take flight October 16-18 at the Statesville Regional Airport, featuring a record 60 hot air balloons, live entertainment, and a new Friday night balloon glow spectacular.<\/p><p>The beloved fall festival, one of the Southeast&#8217;s premier balloon events, draws over 50,000 visitors annually to Statesville. This year&#8217;s lineup includes balloons from 14 states, aerobatic flight demonstrations, and tethered balloon rides available to the public.<\/p><p>New additions include a craft village featuring 75 artisan vendors, a kids&#8217; STEM zone with aviation-themed activities, and a Saturday night concert headlined by Carolina country artist Scotty McCreery.<\/p><p>&#8220;BalloonFest is Statesville&#8217;s signature event,&#8221; said festival director Karen Bunch. &#8220;Every year we work to make it bigger and better while keeping that small-town festival feeling everyone loves.&#8221; Tickets are available at carolinaballoonfest.com.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The 53rd annual Carolina BalloonFest is set to take flight October 16-18 at the Statesville Regional Airport, featuring a record 60 hot air balloons, live entertainment, and a new Friday night balloon glow spectacular. The beloved fall festival, one of the Southeast&#8217;s premier balloon events, draws over 50,000 visitors annually to Statesville. This year&#8217;s lineup [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/statesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/statesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/statesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/statesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/statesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/statesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/statesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/statesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/statesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}