The okra-eating contest at Moore Park has been part of this town's identity for longer than most residents have lived here. It is loud, a little gross, genuinely funny, and it is not going anywhere. What is new this year is a chip-timed 5K road race with finisher medals and age-division awards, registering runners through a national race platform, ending at the same parade that has always closed out St. Andrews Road on a Saturday morning in late September.
A festival built around a vegetable does not usually add a road race unless something about the crowd it is trying to reach has shifted. Irmo in 2026 is filling in around its edges in ways that make more sense once you see the festival's new programming next to the town's new storefronts.
Same Parade Route, One New Race
The Lexington Health Irmo Okra Strut returns to Moore Park on September 25 and 26, 2026. The shape of the weekend has not changed much in decades. Friday night belongs to live music at the Prisma Health Amphitheater inside the park. Saturday morning is the parade, stepping off at 9 a.m. near CrossRoads Intermediate School and running down St. Andrews Road to Lake Murray Boulevard, ending near Irmo Elementary. From there the day moves back to Moore Park for food and beverage vendors, artisan booths, kids' amusements, and the okra-eating contest that gives the whole event its name.
What's new is the Inaugural Irmo Okra Strut 5K Run/Walk, presented by Palmetto Citizens, held the morning of September 26 on a flat, certified course that ends at the parade itself. It is chip-timed, offers finisher medals and t-shirts for anyone registered by September 8, and includes age-division awards from 19-and-under through 65-plus. A festival that has run for generations on a parade and a vegetable-eating contest is now also asking people to show up at dawn with a race bib.
That is not a small addition. It means someone on the Okra Strut Commission looked at who attends this event and decided a fitness crowd was worth building a program for.
The Two Days, Hour by Hour
If you're planning around this weekend, here's how it actually lays out:
| When | What | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Friday, Sept. 25, 6 p.m. | Opening ceremonies | Prisma Health Amphitheater, Moore Park |
| Friday, Sept. 25, 7 p.m. | Live music: The Big Time Band, Monsters of Yacht | Prisma Health Amphitheater |
| Saturday, Sept. 26, 7:30 a.m. | Okra Strut 5K Run/Walk check-in | Near St. Andrews Road |
| Saturday, Sept. 26, 9 a.m. | Parade | CrossRoads Intermediate to Irmo Elementary via St. Andrews Road |
| Saturday, Sept. 26, all day | Food vendors, artisan booths, okra-eating contest, kids' amusements | Moore Park |
| Saturday, Sept. 26, 4 p.m. | Closing performance: Elizabeth as Taylor (Taylor Swift tribute) | Prisma Health Amphitheater |
Parking runs $10 at the gravel lot inside Moore Park, card only, and free shuttles run every 20 minutes from the Irmo Wellness Center and Union United Methodist Church starting at 6 p.m. Friday and 9 a.m. Saturday. St. Andrews Road closes for the parade from 8:50 a.m. to noon on Saturday, so if your normal route to work or errands runs through that stretch, plan around it.
The Closing Act Tells You Who They're Booking For
Friday night's lineup, The Big Time Band and Monsters of Yacht, sits comfortably in the beach-music-adjacent tradition that's long been standard at Midlands festivals. Saturday's closer is different. Elizabeth as Taylor, a Taylor Swift tribute act, takes the amphitheater stage at 4 p.m. to wrap the whole weekend.
Booking a Swift tribute as your marquee closing act, right after adding a road race with a national registration platform, reads like a festival trying to hold onto its longtime crowd while actively courting a younger one. It's a reasonable bet. Irmo's population skews toward families with school-age kids, and a free show built around one of the most streamed artists in the country is the kind of thing that gets a 10-year-old and her parents both to stay for the whole afternoon instead of leaving after the parade.
The Same Season, a Different Main Street
The festival isn't the only place where Irmo looks a little different than it did a year or two ago. Sipp Social celebrated its grand opening at 7524 Woodrow Street, a family-run shop built around healthy shakes and weight-loss programs. A short drive away, Optimal Health & Vitality opened in the Ballentine Market at 1331 Dutch Fork Road, led by fitness coach Jeff Griffith and his wife Nikki Griffith, a former fitness model. Zaxby's held a ribbon-cutting with the Greater Irmo Chamber to open its doors to the Irmo and Ballentine communities. The Postal Hub, an all-inclusive service destination, got its own chamber-sponsored ribbon cutting with Irmo Mayor Bill Danielson and Town Councilman Gabriel Penfield in attendance. And Foot Savi, a therapeutic shoe store that's actually been quietly serving Irmo for 25 years, marked its own chamber ribbon cutting for an expanded footwear selection at 7001 St. Andrews Road in the Murraywood Centre.
None of these are massive developments. None of them will show up in a regional economic report. But look at what they add up to: a wellness and fitness cluster building out along Woodrow Street and Dutch Fork Road, a long-running local business expanding rather than closing, and a national chain choosing Irmo specifically rather than treating it as an overflow market from Columbia. A town's daily errands and after-work stops are one of the clearest signals of what's actually changing, and Irmo's are getting more varied without losing the businesses that have been here for decades.
You Don't Have to Leave Town for the Lake
Irmo's other advantage rarely gets its due because it's easy to take for granted if you already live here. Lake Murray Marina at Marina Bay sits on the lake's northeast corner, inside Irmo, with direct access to more than 600 miles of shoreline that stretches across four counties: Newberry, Lexington, Richland, and Saluda. The marina's own motto is "eat, boat, live!" and it delivers on that literally, with Liberty on the Lake, the waterfront outpost of Liberty Tap Room, sitting right at the dock for anyone who wants food before or after a day on the water.
It's easy to think of Lake Murray as something you drive to from Irmo. The marina and its restaurant make the case that a decent chunk of lake life is already inside town limits, twenty-five minutes from downtown Columbia and a short trip from the Harbison shopping and dining corridor, without needing to plan a special trip out to Lexington or Chapin for waterfront dining.
What This Actually Adds Up To
None of these threads is dramatic on its own. A festival adds a race. A shake shop opens on Woodrow Street. A tribute band closes a stage instead of a beach band. But taken together, they describe a town that's filling in its own gaps rather than simply serving as a pass-through on the way to somewhere else. The Okra Strut is still free, still runs the same parade route it always has, and still crowns an okra-eating champion. It's just also, for the first time, giving out finisher medals at 7:30 in the morning.
That's usually how towns change. Not with an announcement, but with a new line item on an old event's schedule, and a shake shop that wasn't on that corner before.
If you're weighing what a place like Irmo actually offers day to day, beyond the school district maps and the drive-time estimates, this is the kind of texture that's worth paying attention to. And if you're thinking about where that fits into a move, downsizing, or a first home search anywhere in the Midlands, the team at Half Moon Realty has spent years walking these streets with buyers and sellers who wanted more than a listing sheet. Contact us when you're ready to talk it through.
