The City That Rebuilt Itself in Style
The 1931 Hawke’s Bay earthquake killed 256 people and flattened most of Napier in under three minutes. What came next is the part nobody expected: instead of rebuilding piecemeal, the city went up again almost entirely in Art Deco — the style of the moment, all geometric lines, sunburst motifs, and Zigzag Moderne flourishes. It wasn’t a deliberate preservation effort. It was just what architects drew in 1931.
Ninety-five years later, that accident of timing is Napier’s defining feature. The CBD looks like a film set that somebody forgot to strike. You walk past the T&G Building dome, the Daily Telegraph’s chevron facade, the pastel storefronts on Emerson Street, and it takes a minute to register that these aren’t reproductions — they’re the originals, earthquake-strengthened but otherwise untouched.
Four Days in February
Art Deco Weekend runs February 19 to 22, 2026. Four days, something like 200 events — the organisers publish the full programme a few weeks before, but the core is always the same: vintage cars, jazz, architecture walks, and a lot of people in period costume.
The vintage car parade along Marine Parade is the showpiece. Packards, Buicks, a few Chrysler Airflows if you’re lucky. They cruise at walking speed, which is good because half the crowd is trying to take photos while jaywalking. The cars are privately owned, most of them Hawke’s Bay locals who trailer them out once a year and spend February polishing chrome.
Jazz and swing bands play everywhere — wine bars, the Sound Shell on the waterfront, hotel lobbies. Some of the smaller sessions in the bars are honestly better than the main stages, because you’re close enough to hear the upright bass without amplification. The evening cabaret shows and dance parties run late, and the quality varies. The Masonic Hotel usually puts on a good one.
Dressing the Part
This is the bit that makes Art Deco Weekend different from just walking around a pretty town. Everyone dresses up. Not just some enthusiasts — a genuinely large proportion of attendees show up in flapper dresses, fedoras, pin-striped suits, fur stoles, cloche hats. It shifts the whole atmosphere. You stop feeling like a tourist and start feeling like an extra in a period film, which is either wonderful or unsettling depending on your disposition.
If you don’t own vintage clothing (most people don’t), there are costume hire shops in Napier that gear up specifically for the weekend. Book ahead — the good stuff goes early, and by Wednesday you’re left with ill-fitting waistcoats.
The Gatsby Picnic and Other Highlights
The Gatsby Picnic is the event that photographs best — thousands of people in their finest 1930s gear, spread across a park with hampers and champagne glasses. It looks incredible from a distance. Up close it’s a picnic, which means ants, warm wine, and sitting on slightly damp grass in a borrowed silk dress. Still worth it.
The guided architecture walks are genuinely excellent. The Art Deco Trust runs them, and the guides know the buildings inside and out — not just the architectural terms but the stories. Which building survived the earthquake, which was rebuilt three times, which one has a hidden rooftop nobody knows about. The walks book out, so don’t assume you can just show up.
Evening events are where it gets properly festive. Themed dinners, cabaret, dance lessons, late-night parties. The quality is uneven — some are atmospheric and well-produced, others feel like a school formal with better costumes. Ask locals which ones were good last year.
Getting There and the Accommodation Problem
Napier’s Hawke’s Bay Airport has domestic flights from Auckland and Wellington. Air New Zealand runs the route; it’s a short hop. If you’re driving from Wellington, budget four hours through the Tararua Range — scenic but winding, and the last hour through the Wairarapa is flat enough to be boring.
Accommodation is the hard part. Napier is not a big city, and Art Deco Weekend fills it. If you want to walk to events, you need to book months ahead — I’m talking October or November for a February festival. The motels along Kennedy Road are the fallback, but you’ll need a car. Some people stay in Hastings, twenty minutes south, which works fine but means you’re driving home after the evening events.
Trip.com and KLOOK both list Hawke’s Bay accommodation — worth checking if the obvious booking sites are sold out, since they sometimes have different inventory.
Hawke’s Bay Beyond the Festival
Extending your trip is a good idea, because Hawke’s Bay on its own is worth several days. This is one of New Zealand’s best wine regions — Syrah and Chardonnay, mainly, with a climate that people compare to Bordeaux (the comparison is a stretch, but the wine is legitimately good).
Cape Kidnappers has an Australasian gannet colony that you can visit between October and April. It’s a long walk along the beach at low tide, or you can book a tractor-trailer tour. Te Mata Peak is a short drive from Hastings — the view from the top covers the whole plain to the coast, and on a clear day you can see the Ruahine Ranges.
If you’re doing a broader New Zealand trip, KKday has day-tour packages for Hawke’s Bay wineries and Cape Kidnappers that save you the hassle of renting a car for one day.
The Honest Version
February in Napier is mid-summer: 24 to 28 degrees, sunny, occasionally windy. The Marine Parade can be brutally exposed if there’s no shade and you’re in period costume — some of those 1930s fabrics are not designed for New Zealand sun. Bring sunscreen. Bring water. Bring a hat that isn’t just decorative.
The festival is free to attend in the general sense — you can walk around, watch the cars, soak up the atmosphere without paying anything. But the ticketed events (dinners, cabaret, guided walks) add up. Budget for at least a couple of them; they’re where the real atmosphere lives.
One thing the promotional material doesn’t mention: the crowds. Napier’s CBD is small, and on the Saturday it gets properly packed. If you don’t love crowds, the Friday and Sunday are noticeably quieter and you still get most of the experience.
After the Last Dance
The festival winds down on Sunday afternoon. By Monday the costume hire shops have queues of people returning fedoras, the vintage cars are back on their trailers, and Emerson Street is just a pretty street again. The buildings don’t change, obviously — they’ve been there since 1931 and they’ll be there next February. But there’s something about seeing them full of people dressed for the era they were built in that makes you notice details you’d otherwise walk past. The sunburst above a doorway. The font on a pharmacy sign. A zigzag pattern in the terrazzo floor of a shop you ducked into to buy water.
