The Allegheny Ukulele Soirée is Pennsylvania's longest running Ukulele festival, located in central Pennsylvania in the foothills of the Alleghenies. Dedicated to sharing the ukulele with both the local and ukulele communities, the Soirée blends practical workshops with cultural exploration.

Each year we bring top talent from the Ukulele World to our festival, right here in Altoona, PA. We pride ourselves on providing an intense and immersive experience to all of our festival attendees.

History of the Allegheny Ukulele Soirée

The Soirée began in 2014 as a promotional event for the Allegheny Ukulele Kollective, the local ukulele club. It featured about five workshops led by an assortment of club members and lasted about six hours. In that first year, we had approximately 100 attendees.

As we continued to expand our offerings and our attendee pool, we relocated from the Penn State Altoona Campus (2014, 2015) to the Laurel Lodge, a beautiful venue just outside of Altoona. We hosted the Soirée at the Lodge for three beautiful springs before finally outgrowing the space in 2018. In our final year at the Lodge, we had over 160 people in attendance including attendees, vendors, instructors, and guest artists. 

Looking Forward

As we enter our second decade, we continue to look toward the future at our venue, the Altoona Grand Hotel! We're excited to be back together once again in an all-in-one space. We aim to bring high-quality ukulele and music programming to our region and hope that you will join us in 2024!