SALT LAKE CITY — The Salt Lake City Greek Festival celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2026. It’s known as an opportunity to embrace Greek culture and eat some incredible food, but it’s also got a long tradition of doing a lot of good in the community - especially in a year where people could really use it.
Since 1976, crowds have come to the Greek Orthodox Holy Trinity Cathedral in Downtown Salt Lake City for this event. Parishioner Chris Coombs says this weekend, they expect possibly 50,000 people to attend.
“You get people who are not part of the community, but they become part of the community just by being here not only for this event, but for other events we do throughout the year,” Coombs said.
Some of the money they raise supports the church, but they also use it as a way to give back.
“One of the things we recently started doing was donating to school food banks around the valley. A lot of people don’t think about these food banks feeding kids during the holidays,” said longtime volunteer Harry Souvall.
Souvall said they’re proud to help out at a time when food banks are feeling more demand.
“We’re actually calling schools and asking, ‘Do you have a food bank? We have some money for you!’ We try to give it out around Thanksgiving and Christmas so families that are in need can have access to that,” he said.
With each gyro that comes down the well-organized assembly line, volunteers are happy to share their culture, as well as what they can to those who need it.
