40 Years of Tram Sunday in Fleetwood

Fleetwood Celebrates Over 40 Years of its Tram Sunday Tradition

Tram Sunday 17-07-2016. This one day event is a great day out for all the family. Over 200 different classic and vintage vehicles are on display along with fairground rides, stalls selling a wide assortment of goods, live performances and entertainment. © Alamy

Posted June 1, 2025 by Ed

Fleetwood’s celebrated Festival of Transport, more affectionately known as “Tram Sunday,” first took place in 1985 as part of the centenary celebrations for the Blackpool Tramway. The event proved so popular that it became an annual fixture, growing over the decades into one of the largest free transport and community festivals in the United Kingdom. Now held each year on the third Sunday in July, the 2025 gathering—on 20 July—marked its fortieth anniversary, a milestone that reflected both local pride and enduring public enthusiasm. Images are provided by Mitchell Morton who attended this year.

From its inception, Tram Sunday combined nostalgia for the region’s transport heritage with the atmosphere of a family celebration. Fleetwood’s streets filled with more than two hundred classic and vintage vehicles, from historic trams and buses to cars, motorcycles and emergency vehicles. Alongside these displays, visitors enjoyed live entertainment, market stalls, street performers and fairground attractions. The event’s accessibility—offering free admission and parking—has long been central to its appeal, drawing crowds of more than seventy thousand people to the town each year.

While the tram remains its symbolic heart, the festival has evolved into a broader celebration of community and creativity, with local organisations, artists and volunteers contributing to the day’s activities. Over time, Tram Sunday has become a defining element of Fleetwood’s cultural identity, reflecting both its maritime and transport heritage and its continuing ability to bring together residents and visitors in a shared spirit of festivity.

After forty years, the Fleetwood Festival of Transport endures not merely as a commemoration of vehicles past, but as a vibrant expression of community life on the Fylde Coast—an annual reminder of how heritage, spectacle and civic pride can transform a seaside town into a living celebration of its own history.