The Mill Road Winter Fair runs 10.30am to 4.30pm on Saturday 5 December. Mill Road closes from 9am, the Citi 2 is diverted and Gwydir Street car park shuts.

The Mill Road Winter Fair has a confirmed date. The organisers’ own site says the 2026 Fair will be on Saturday 5th December, 10.30am to 4.30pm.

That is the first Saturday of December, which is where the Fair has sat since it started in 2005. Last year’s was the twentieth.

The road closure is the thing to plan around

Mill Road shuts for the day, and it shuts to everything. From the organisers’ road closure information:

  • Closed 9am to 5.30pm: Mill Road between East Road and Coleridge Road, plus Mortimer Road, Headly Street, and the tops of Tenison Road, St Barnabas Road, Devonshire Road, Gwydir Street, Cavendish Road and Catharine Street where they meet Mill Road.
  • The closure covers cyclists and scooters as well as cars. You are required to dismount and push a bike through the closed section. Electric scooters and electric bikes must not be ridden through it at all.
  • Reopening happens gradually rather than at a stroke, and there is some vehicle movement inside the closure all day, so the organisers ask pedestrians to take care and to give way to emergency and other vehicles.

If you live or trade inside the closure, the organisers publish a road closure notice and distribute it separately.

Buses, trains and where to leave a car

The Citi 2 does not run down Mill Road between 9am and 5.30pm. The nearest places to pick it up are Perne Road near the Mill Road and Brookfields junction, Coldhams Lane, and Emmanuel Street. The 114 to Addenbrooke’s runs as normal.

By train it is a ten minute walk. Out of the ticket hall, turn right, past the Ibis and through the station car park towards the red footbridge, left under the bridge, then right onto Devonshire Road. Mill Road is at the end of it.

Gwydir Street car park is closed from the evening before until the Fair ends, because the Food Fair is built on it. That catches people out every year. The organisers point drivers instead at Queen Anne Terrace, the Grafton Centre and Clifton Way at Cambridge Leisure Park. Of those, Queen Anne Terrace is the council’s cheapest multi-storey for a long stay, at £24 for over six hours and free after 6pm; our parking in Cambridge page has the rest of the tariffs.

Park and ride is free to park for up to 18 hours and drops you in the centre: the Newmarket Road orange route stops at the Grafton Centre and Drummer Street, and the Babraham Road green route stops at the station and Drummer Street, both a walk from the Fair.

Blue Badge holders can park on single or double yellow lines for up to three hours where there is no loading ban and no obstruction. The organisers suggest the two-way approach roads: St Barnabas Road, Tenison Road and Devonshire Road on the Petersfield side, Hope Street and Cavendish Road on the Romsey side, with a warning that the back ways to Hope Street and Cavendish Road are hard to find if you do not know them.

Anything else affecting the route in is on our Cambridge roadworks and travel page.

What happens, and when

The 2026 programme is not out. The organisers keep last year’s on the site expressly “to give an idea of the kind of things that happen at the Fair”, and the day has run to much the same shape for years:

2025 timings
9.00 Road closure starts
10.30 Fair opens
10.30 Fire engine pull, East Road to the bridge
10.30 Opening ceremony, Ditchburn Gardens
11.45 Parade, Salisbury Club to Petersfield
15.40 Final parade, Gwydir Street to Petersfield
16.15 All trading ends
16.30 Fair ends
17.30 Roads fully open

Music runs off several stages rather than one: last year they were at Donkey Common, Ditchburn Gardens, St Barnabas Church, the Argyle Street Housing Co-op, St Philip’s Church and the corner of Thoday Street, with buskers spread along the street between them. Stalls line Mill Road itself and spill into Donkey Common, Petersfield Green, Ditchburn Gardens and Headly Street, and the food traders concentrate in the Food Fair on Gwydir Street car park.

Practical things worth knowing on the day

  • First aid is at Mill Road Baptist Church, or ask any steward in a hi-vis jacket.
  • Toilets, from the organisers’ list: Anglia Ruskin University, Zion Baptist Church, Ditchburn Place (small donation), The Bath House, King’s Church, St Barnabas Church, Mill Road Community Centre, Mill Road Baptist Church (which has accessible toilets), St Philip’s Church, Romsey Mill, and pubs on and near Mill Road. Baby changing at most of the same.
  • Coming with children, agree your own meeting point before you set off, and report a missing child to any steward.
  • On the day the Fair has a phone line, 07303 142689.
  • There is a Mill Road Winter Fair app with stall, music and event listings, on Google Play and the App Store.

The Fair is run entirely by volunteers and funded by donations and sponsorship through Love Mill Road, which is why the programme lands late: performers and stallholders are still being recruited through the autumn.

Cam News will update this page when the 2026 programme, stall list and road closure notice are published.

Sources