The Chipping Norton Mop Fair ran 17 to 19 September 2026; 2027 looks likely for 16 to 18 September. No date is confirmed yet: here is what to watch for.

The 2026 Chipping Norton Mop Fair is over. It ran from Thursday 17 to Saturday 19 September, under a county traffic order that shut the A44 Market Place from 00:01 on the Thursday until 04:00 on Sunday 20 September. The roads are back to normal.

The next fair is September 2027, most likely Thursday 16 to Saturday 18 September. Nobody has announced it yet; that date is our projection from the pattern of past years, set out below. The confirmation to wait for is Oxfordshire County Council’s special event order, usually made in early September.

Opening times are never published by the town or the showmen. The only listing for 2026, from The Oxford Magazine, gave noon to 10pm on the Friday and Saturday. The 2026 detail below stays as the record of what the fair closes, which has been the same year after year.

Last checked 11 October 2026.

How the 2026 fair was set up. Oxfordshire County Council made the Chipping Norton Mop Fair (Special Event) Order 2026 on 7 September 2026, and it runs from 00:01 on Thursday 17 September to 04:00 on Sunday 20 September.

That window was the one hard, published fact about the 2026 fair. Everything about opening times below is flagged for what it is.

Chipping Norton fair 2027: when it is likely to be

No source has announced the 2027 Mop Fair, and none normally does this early. In 2026 the first public notice was Chipping Norton Town Council reposting the county’s closure list on 29 July, the county’s statement of reasons followed on 20 August and the order was made on 7 September, ten days before the fair. Expect the same order of events next summer.

What the published dates do show is a steady pattern. The fair runs Thursday to Saturday, finishing on the last Saturday before 21 September:

Year Fair days Source
2014 Thursday 18 to Saturday 20 September Chipping Norton News, 15 September 2014
2025 Thursday 18 to Saturday 20 September Banbury Guardian
2026 Thursday 17 to Saturday 19 September (order 00:01 Thursday to 04:00 Sunday) Oxfordshire County Council order
2027 Likely Thursday 16 to Saturday 18 September Our projection from the pattern, not confirmed

That fits the Mop’s roots as a hiring fair held in the run-up to Michaelmas, when farm and domestic contracts traditionally started and ended. Treat 2027 as a working date only until the county publishes its special event order, normally on the county’s large public events page. The county took its 2026 Chipping Norton Fair page down after the event, so the 2027 entry will appear there as a new listing. We will update this page when it does.

Market Place in Chipping Norton on an ordinary day, the wide A44 street lined with stone shopfronts
Market Place, Chipping Norton: the stretch of the A44 the fair fills. Photo: JThomas (CC BY-SA 2.0), via Wikimedia

The 2026 closures, road by road

These applied from 17 to 20 September 2026 and have now lapsed. Taken from the order itself and the county’s order summary, which has since been taken down.

No vehicles at all:

  • A44 Market Place, the main carriageway from the junction with New Street (A44) to the junction with High Street (Topside).
  • The High Street link, from its junction with New Street (A44) eastwards to its junction with High Street north of the Town Hall.

One-way, including two reversals:

  • A44 main carriageway: no southbound traffic from London Road (A44) to High Street (Topside). Northbound only.
  • High Street: the one-way southbound section between Horse Fair and Boots the Chemist is reversed.
  • Albion Street: no northbound traffic from Burford Road (A361) to London Road (A44). Southbound only.
  • A361 Burford Road: southeast to northwest only, from Albion Street to West Street.
  • A361 West Street: northbound only, from Burford Road to Cattle Market.

No waiting:

  • High Street, east side, from Cattle Market to the A44 main carriageway near Horse Fair (Topside).
  • Cattle Market, both sides, from West Street (A361) to High Street.

The order also suspends the 2013 West Oxfordshire waiting and permitted parking order, the 2006 disabled persons’ parking places order and the 1999 Market Place traffic order, the last of these specifically to lift the existing High Street one-way so it can be run the other way.

The signed diversions

The county publishes both routes.

  • Northbound, coming off the A44 New Street: take the southern length of High Street, south, then east, then north into High Street Topside, on to High Street proper and out on to the A44 London Road.
  • Southbound, from the A44 London Road: Albion Street, west into Burford Road, north into West Street, back on to the A44 New Street.

Emergency service vehicles and event vehicles are exempt. So are vehicles setting up or dismantling the fair, and anything needing access to premises or emergency utility work.

Chipping Norton fair opening times

Neither the organisers nor Chipping Norton Town Council publish opening times. The town council’s events page does not list the fair at all, and its only mention of it is a notice board post on 29 July 2026 reproducing the county’s closure list.

What the order implies is a Thursday to Saturday fair. The traffic management starts just after midnight on Thursday 17 September, which is when the showmen build up, and ends at 4am on Sunday 20 September, which is when they have to be off the road. That matches 2025, when the Banbury Guardian reported the fair running Thursday 18 to Saturday 20 September under an identical order.

Treat Thursday 17, Friday 18 and Saturday 19 September as the fair days, and expect the rides to run into the evening on each.

One listing did give times. The Oxford Magazine’s event page, published on 5 September 2026, put the fair on Friday 18 and Saturday 19 September, noon to 10pm on both days, free to enter with rides charged separately. The same page also describes “three days” of rides, so it does not settle whether the rides opened on the Thursday; no first-party source published times at all.

Why the road, and not a field

The county’s statement of reasons, dated 20 August 2026, is unusually direct about it. It calls the Mop “an annual Charter Fair attracting large numbers of visitors” and states that the council “is satisfied that, because of tradition and the nature of the event, it is not appropriate or practicable for it to be held other than on the road.”

Mop fairs began as hiring fairs, where people looking for work carried a symbol of their trade, a mop for domestic service. The Banbury Guardian puts the Chipping Norton fair’s origins in the 12th century and records that the Nichols family has supplied its rides for the past hundred years.

Fairground rides set up along a Cotswold town street beside a stone church, with people walking between them on a sunny evening
A mop fair set up on the street itself, in Cirencester (library picture). Photo: Steve Daniels (CC BY-SA 2.0), via Wikimedia

The order names the promoter as Justin Gargan of Ubico Ltd, care of West Oxfordshire District Council at Avenue 4, Station Lane, Witney.

Parking, and getting there from Witney

Cattle Market and the High Street east side both lose their parking for the duration, so the usual town-centre kerbside is gone. West Oxfordshire’s car parks are free everywhere in the district, Chipping Norton included, but they are small and they will fill: see our parking guide for how the district’s free-but-time-limited system works.

Coming from Witney, the A44 approach from the south is the one affected. If you are driving up for the evening, expect the last stretch through Market Place to be shut and the diversion to send you round Albion Street and Burford Road. Our roadworks and travel page tracks what else is closed across the district that week, including the seven-road Witney microsurfacing cluster that starts on 24 September.

Still to come

  • The 2027 traffic order, the first firm date, expected late summer 2027.
  • Opening times and the ride line-up, which no source publishes in advance.
  • Ride prices, never published.

What else is on

The Witney Feast on the Leys runs earlier in the same week each September. Coming up next: fireworks nights around Witney, the Chipping Norton Christmas lights switch-on and everything else in what’s on in Witney this month.

Frequently asked questions

When is the next Chipping Norton fair? September 2027. No date has been published, but the fair has run Thursday to Saturday ending on the last Saturday before 21 September in 2014, 2025 and 2026, which points to Thursday 16 to Saturday 18 September 2027. Oxfordshire County Council’s special event order, usually made in early September, is the confirmation to wait for.

When was the Chipping Norton Mop Fair 2026? The traffic order ran from 00:01 on Thursday 17 September to 04:00 on Sunday 20 September 2026, so the fair days were Thursday 17, Friday 18 and Saturday 19 September. One listing gave noon to 10pm on the Friday and Saturday.

Which roads are closed? The A44 Market Place from New Street to High Street (Topside), and the High Street link from New Street eastwards to High Street north of the Town Hall. Several other roads become one-way and two existing one-ways are reversed.

Can I still drive through Chipping Norton? Yes, on the signed diversions. Northbound traffic goes via the southern length of High Street and High Street Topside to the A44 London Road; southbound goes via Albion Street, Burford Road and West Street.

What time does the fair open? Neither the town council nor the showmen publish opening times. For 2026 The Oxford Magazine listed noon to 10pm on Friday and Saturday; that is a third-party listing, not an official timetable.

Why is it held on the road? The county council’s statement of reasons says that, because of tradition and the nature of this Charter Fair, it is “not appropriate or practicable for it to be held other than on the road”.

Sources