Raw States

Exit Zero Jazz Festival

Cape May, NJ · Music

When

October 22–25, 2026

Where

Cape May Convention Hall and venues citywide · Cape May · NJ

Cost

Not confirmed

Status

Confirmed from the organizer's published schedule

This biannual jazz festival fills Cape May's Convention Hall and its bars and restaurants each spring and fall, with New Orleans-style second-line parades marching through the historic district between sets. It has become a statewide and out-of-state draw for jazz fans.

The history within reach

• Cape May, the fake Newport from A Complete Unknown0.3 mi

  The 1965 Newport Folk Festival, the one where Dylan went electric and the crowd's reaction became sixty years of argument, was rebuilt on the New Jersey shore, with the songs performed live on set rather than mimed..

• Cape May Victorian Weekend0.5 mi

  Cape May's historic preservation group opens the town's Victorian mansions for candlelight tours, a crafts show, and walking tours of the country's largest collection of Victorian architecture.

• Cape May, the Victorian town0.5 mi

  One of the oldest seaside resorts in the country, burned nearly flat in 1878 and rebuilt all at once in the gingerbread style of that single decade, so it is now the largest collection of Victorian houses in America, a whole town of them, a National Historic Landmark entire.

• Cape May Light2.4 mi

  The light at the very bottom of New Jersey, where the Delaware Bay meets the ocean and the whole eastern flyway of migrating birds funnels down to the point to cross.

• The concrete ship at Sunset Beach2.8 mi

  When steel ran short in the First World War the government tried building ships out of concrete, which floated but were too heavy to be any use.