Birmingham, AL Special Events & Permits: Street Fair Rules (2026)

Section 12-14-4 bans selling, offering, or displaying merchandise on public streets and sidewalks within Birmingham's downtown study area (bounded by 12th Avenue North, Red Mountain Expressway and 26th Street North, Highland Avenue South and 12th Avenue South, and I-65) and within neighborhood retail business districts, unless the sale falls into a listed exception. Subsection (3) carves out crafts, antiques, farm products, and food and beverages sold at a special sidewalk or street sale run by a nonprofit or merchants association, capped at seven days, with a permit from the mayor's office.

Subsection (4) broadens the exception to goods, services, and food generally, but adds that every participating vendor must carry a current city business license, and limits each contained retail business district to two such events per calendar year, each still capped at seven days. Other carve-outs in the same section cover newspapers and magazines sold contemporaneously with delivery, and sales for charitable, philanthropic, or patriotic organizations (or by blind vendors) under a permit issued through § 12-14-21. Applicants for the sidewalk/street-sale permit apply through the mayor's office rather than the city traffic engineer, distinguishing this permit track from the parade and special-event permit issued under § 12-5-22.

Merchants planning a Birmingham street fair or festival booth should confirm with the mayor's office whether their event falls inside the mapped study area or a designated neighborhood retail district, since the seven-day and twice-a-year limits attach specifically to that street-sale exception, not to festivals held entirely on private property or park land.