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Loading The Pärnu year…
The dates Pärnu's year turns on — when beach parking starts being charged, when Supeluse closes to cars, when the lifeguards and the water testing start and stop, and when the festivals land on top.
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Pärnu's year has a hinge in it. Four of the town's own rules start and stop on published dates — what you pay to park at the beach, whether Supeluse tänav has cars on it, whether anyone is watching the water, whether anyone is testing it — and between them they decide what living here is like from one week to the next. This page lists them in the order they come around, with the festivals that land on top of them.
Two things are worth knowing before you read it. The published calendar is a summer calendar: it runs from 1 May to the beginning of October, and the town's other six months are the ones nobody schedules. And the beaches themselves never close — it is the watching, the testing and the charging that are seasonal.
Happening now
Valgerand's bathing season
1 May – 15 September 2026 · Audru osavald
Valgerand, west of the town in the Audru osavald, keeps a longer season than the city beaches: 1 May to 15 September. It is reached by a lit promenade and has a lifeguard tower, changing cabins and a viewing tower, and it holds the best four-year bathing-water class of any beach around Pärnu.
In the first fortnight of September this is the one beach around Pärnu still inside its own season, when the city's ended on 31 August.
5–6 September 2026 · Pärnu Kahe Silla Klubi, from Vaasa park
The road race Olympic medallist Jüri Jaanson started in 2001, held on the first weekend of September and run across both of the town's bridges. Saturday is the family day — wheelchair race, children's races and the 3 km Pärnu Evening Race at 21:00; the main race starts at noon on Sunday.
1–3 October 2026 · St Elizabeth's church and the town centre
The first thing in the calendar after the beach season ends, and the one that uses the dark rather than working around it: ticketed light-and-laser performances in St Elizabeth's church, plus three free outdoor performances each evening that walk the audience through the town centre.
How these dates work
Fixed dates — feast days, holidays — recur every year and are worked out forward from today, so this stays right without updates. Dates marked as approximate move year to year. The exact hours, and whether an event runs at all in a given year, are set by the host: confirm with them before you set out.
A date that only its organiser can set is shown here only once they have announced it. Until then the rule it follows is stated instead — we would rather tell you the rule than guess you a day.
Fuller calendars: Pärnu linn — events calendar — the city's own listing, week by week, including everything too small or too new to be on this page · Visit Pärnu — the annual festivals — the tourist board's fuller list of what recurs, month by month · Pärnu linn — beaches, lifeguards and the season rules — where the season dates and the lifeguards' hours are published · Pärnu linn — parking — the two zones, their hours and the permit prices
Town Tools builds free, public tools for Pärnu and towns around the world. A team of agents researches each place from local sources and keeps the tools up to date; residents suggest new ones and report corrections.
1 May – 31 August 2027 · Pärnu linnavalitsus
The ranna piirkond — the beach parking zone — only exists for four months of the year. From 1 May to 31 August it is charged every day between 08:00 and 18:00, public holidays included, at €3 an hour or €15 for 24 hours. Outside those four months it is not charged at all.
18 May – 31 August 2027 · Pärnu linnavalitsus
The street from the centre down to the beach is closed to motor vehicles from 18 May to 31 August, from the top of the street as far as Supeluse 22. Signs and elephant-shaped barriers go in on the first day, and the businesses along it put out seasonal terraces for the summer.
On 1 September the barriers come out and it is an ordinary street again — worth knowing if you have spent the summer walking down the middle of it.
1 June – 31 August 2027 · AS G4S Eesti, for Pärnu linn
Keskrand is watched every day of the season, holidays included, along one kilometre from the Side tänav extension to the edge of the women's beach, from two towers. The hours are longer in high summer than at the shoulders: in 2026, 10:00–18:00 from 1 to 12 June and 24 to 31 August, and 10:00–20:00 from 13 June to 23 August. In 2027 the long hours run 12 June to 22 August.
1 June – 31 August 2027 · Pärnu linn and Terviseamet
Pärnu's official bathing season is 1 June to 31 August. Terviseamet samples the city beaches about every fortnight through it — in 2026 on 18 May, 1 and 15 June, 29 June, 13 and 27 July, and 10 August — and publishes every result to the national register.
Sampling stops with the season. From 1 September nobody is testing the water and no daily notice is being posted; what stands is the last sample taken and the four-year class, which is not recalculated until the end of the next season.
2–4 July 2027 · Vallikääru aas and the old town
A free medieval and heritage festival across three days: five stages, a medieval market, craft workshops, knight and archery tournaments, and a children's village.
8–18 July 2027 · Pärnu Kontserdimaja
Eleven days of orchestral music built around Paavo, Neeme and Kristjan Järvi, with the Järvi Academy's masterclasses running alongside it. It is the thing that gives a 40,000-person town a cultural identity beyond the beach, and it overlaps the back end of Hansapäevad week.
until Tue, 15 Sept
Valgerand's bathing season · happening now