Night Market

The Richmond Night Market, Fort Langley Night Market and North Vancouver’s Shipyards Night Market are great places for food, shopping and entertainment.

All three markets feature food trucks, music and lots of vendors. The Shipyards Night Market takes place on Fridays between late spring and early fall. It features concerts with awesome bands. It also has a beer garden, artisan vendors and free admission. The market in Fort Langley is also good, on Friday evenings and free to attend. You have to pay though to get into the market in Richmond.

The Richmond Night Market has been running for over 20 years, has an Asian theme and is famous for its food stalls and vendors selling imported products. It runs on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. The Fort Langley Night Market, meanwhile, has been running for just a couple of years, operates only on Fridays and features primarily artisan crafts. The Shipyards Night Market ran for a number of years, stopped for a couple of years, but is back again as of 2023.

Weekend Night Markets in Vancouver

The Lower Mainland has had a number of night markets over the years. One that no longer happens is the Illumination Night Market in Richmond. There also used to be the Surrey Night Market and a Vancouver Chinatown Night Market.

Night markets that still take place in Metro Vancouver are the Richmond Night Market, Fort Langley Night Market and Shipyards Night Market. There is also the Vancouver Christmas Market, but it’s just in the winter and runs all afternoon and evening from mid-November until Christmas Eve.

Night Market Food Stalls — Richmond Night Market

Richmond Night Market

The Richmond Night Market has a distinct Chinese theme and offers tasty Asian smells, music and imported things to buy. It takes place at 8351 River Road. The market attracts as many as 30,000 shoppers per weekend and boasts over 1,000,000 visitors a year.

The Richmond event is huge and quite the sight to see, with its hundreds of vendor stalls and crowds of people. In fact, it claims to be the largest night market in North America for the last dozen or so years running.

In years when it does operate, the Richmond Night Market costs about $5 and is open from 7 pm from mid-May until mid-October on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and holiday Mondays. It’s highly recommended – you’ll think that you’re in China!

In addition to dozens of food and market vendors, the Richmond venue is also home to a number of cool dinosaur displays (which helps make it fun for children).

North Vancouver’s Shipyard Night Market

North Vancouver also hosts an exceptional night market. It’s very different from the Richmond Night Market, but equally as impressive in its own way.

Whereas the Richmond market is amazing for all its Asian tastes, smells, sounds and products, the North Shore event has a beer garden, great live bands and views of Vancouver and Burrard Inlet. It also features farmers’ market-style vendors and dozens of food trucks selling every kind of food imaginable.

North Vancouver’s Shipyards Night Market takes place at Shipbuilders’ Square near Lonsdale Quay, just a short walk from the North Shore’s SeaBus terminal. It’s usually open on Friday evenings from May until September between 5 and 10 pm. It didn’t happen in 2020, 2021 or 2022, however, but it does once again in 2023.

For information about North Vancouver’s summer event on Friday evenings, see our article about the Shipyards Night Market.

Food Trucks at the Shipyards Night Market — Shipyards Night Market

Other Lower Mainland Markets

In addition to night markets, Vancouver and the surrounding region is also famous for its farmers markets. For a list of Lower Mainland farmers markets in alphabetical order, see Metro Vancouver’s Farmers Markets. For lists of farmers markets on specific days of the week, check out the following:

Wednesday Farmers Markets: Downtown Vancouver, Surrey and Whistler.
Thursday Farmers Markets: New Westminster, Port Coquitlam and False Creek.
Saturday Farmers Markets: Abbotsford, Burnaby, Fort Langley, Haney, Squamish, Trout Lake and the West End.
Sunday Farmers Markets: Ambleside, Coquitlam, Kitsilano, Steveston Village, White Rock and Whistler.

And for farmers markets taking place outside the summer season, check out Lower Mainland Winter Markets.

Vancouver Christmas Market

In addition to the above, there is also the Vancouver Christmas Market which runs from late November until just before Christmas. It takes place during the day too, but gets especially lively in the evenings.

The Vancouver Christmas Market obviously isn’t a summer market, but it is a night one, which is why we mention it here. It takes place at Jack Poole Plaza beside the Vancouver Convention Centre in downtown Vancouver. Its theme is 100% Christmassy and definitely European.