Florida's longest-running hot sauce festival is heading back to Pinellas Park for its 26th year, bringing two days of vendor showdowns, wing eating contests, and a stilt walker dressed as a 10-foot pepper man to England Brothers Park. The I Like It Hot Festival runs Saturday, September 12 and Sunday, September 13, from 10 am to 4 pm, with free admission and free parking for anyone willing to brave the heat.
According to Tampa Bay 28, the festival is one of the longest-running spicy food festivals in the entire country, and it has drawn thousands of food lovers, chile heads, spice enthusiasts and adventurous shoppers from across the Southeast in past years. This year's event will again fill England Brothers Park at 5010 Dave McKay Way with hot sauces, seasonings, salsas, gourmet foods, snacks, and specialty retail vendors, giving attendees a chance to sample, shop and meet the makers behind the brands they love. The festival is billed as family and pet friendly, with live entertainment running throughout the weekend.
From a School Garden Project to Saucy Queen
The festival's organizer, Michele Northrup, has built her own reputation in the hot sauce world alongside the event she runs. Northrup launched her gourmet hot sauce company, Intensity Academy, in 2007 after creating a carrot-and-habanero sauce for a school garden project, and she has since won more than 55 national awards, according to AllBusiness.com. She pioneered tea-infused hot sauces in Tampa Bay and picked up the local nickname the Saucy Queen along the way.
Northrup said attendees will not want to miss the two-day festival, according to Tampa Bay 28's report. The festival has moved venues over the years, having previously been held at the Largo Event Center in Largo before relocating to the larger open-air grounds at England Brothers Park, as reported by WUSF. The 10.74-acre park also features a permanent band shell built by local contractors following a destructive tornado that struck Pinellas Park in 1992, per the City of Pinellas Park.
Wings, Wax Lollipops, and a Belt Sanctioned Overseas
Competitive eating is a centerpiece of the weekend. The festival's second annual Carlos' Consuming Fire Hot Sauce Hot Wing Contest challenges 10 contestants to eat 14 jumbo wings from Clearwater's Southern Steer Butcher in under seven minutes, with a $250 gift basket on the line, according to a Facebook post from Carlos' Consuming Fire Hot Sauce, LLC. Beyond the wing contest, the festival includes an amateur salsa competition and an amateur barbecue competition, and past editions have also featured what organizers call the world's hottest lollipop as part of the Extreme Lolli Lick-A-Thon, a novelty crafted by Intensity Academy that has drawn crowds looking for a different kind of burn, as noted by Patch.
The festival's marquee contest, though, carries international weight. The International League of Fire Pepper Eating Challenge is sanctioned by the League of Fire, a United Kingdom-based organization that serves as the global governing body for competitive chili eating and maintains official world rankings and championship belt matches. Under League of Fire rules, contestants must swallow each pepper pod completely down to the stalk without drinking any liquid, and immediate disqualification follows if a competitor vomits, with rounds progressing from milder jalapeños up to superhot Carolina Reapers.
A Growing Market Behind the Long-Running Event
The festival's staying power tracks with a broader boom in the craft condiment world. The U.S. hot sauce market was valued at $1.45 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $1.99 billion by 2034, fueled by rising consumer demand for bold and spicy flavor profiles, according to the IMARC Group. Industry research from TorchBearer Sauces also points to a shift in what shoppers actually want at events like this one: craft hot sauce demand has moved toward flavor-first profiles built around fruit, garlic and fermented bases rather than pure capsaicin heat, which helps explain why small-batch sauce makers continue to draw passionate crowds at regional food festivals.
The I Like It Hot Festival also lands squarely in the middle of Tampa Bay's busiest culinary season. More than 20 food and beverage festivals are held across Pinellas and Hillsborough counties each September, ranging from craft beer fests to sake block parties and chef competitions, according to Patch. Exhibitor and sponsorship opportunities remain open for vendors interested in joining the lineup, and organizers describe the event as offering hundreds of shopping opportunities for anyone hoping to sample, shop and discover new flavors before the two-day run wraps up on Sunday.
