Ten Days. One Race. The Whole City Is Watching. 🏇

Ten days to the Preakness. But first — last Saturday mattered.

The 45th Main Street Festival was everything last year's wasn't: clear skies, full streets, no incidents, and Maureen Rogers leading the parade as Grand Marshal. After 2025's explosion, fire, arrest, and brawl, Laurel needed a clean one. It got it.

Now the city turns toward May 16th. This week's edition covers the Preakness build-up, Maryland's first blockchain career conference coming to Capitol Tech in July, and Cops Camp registration — plus 7 events this week building straight to race day.

On Saturday, May 16, 2026, the 151st running of the Preakness Stakes takes place at Laurel Park, 198 Laurel Race Track Road — and the city has been preparing for this moment for months. The "Saddle Up, Laurel!" campaign, launched in March by Mayor Keith Sydnor and the city's Economic and Community Development office, is a coordinated push to get every resident, business, and neighborhood leaning into what is genuinely a rare opportunity: a nationally televised, Triple Crown-level sporting event happening in Laurel's own backyard.

The Preakness Stakes is the second jewel of horse racing's Triple Crown, run annually in Maryland and drawing national press, racing's biggest names, and tens of thousands of spectators. With Laurel Park hosting Preakness 151, the city of Laurel has a direct line to that visibility — and the campaign is designed to make sure visitors remember where they were. Businesses that want to participate in official city promotions should contact [email protected]. Tickets for Preakness 151 are available at preakness.com/tickets. Everything the city is doing around the race can be found at cityoflaurel.org/saddleup.

For residents, the "Saddle Up, Laurel!" campaign has also organized a full run of community events in the days leading up to race day — and the lineup, when you see it all together, is remarkable. Here is your complete guide to the next 10 days in Laurel:

Tonight, Senior Paint Social at the Greenview Drive Cabana (11:00 AM — more on this in events). Thursday brings the Laurel Main Street Farmer's Market on Main Street and the Spartan Singers Spring Concert at Laurel High School. Friday evening is Music on Main at the Laurel Quill Lot — a free outdoor concert, the kind of event that turns a spring night into a memory. Saturday is the Main Street Walking Tour departing from the Laurel Museum. Sunday is Mother's Day and a Yoga Retreat at the Mansion at Laurel. Tuesday the 12th, the city is screening Secretariat — the film about the greatest racehorse in history — outdoors at Alice B. McCullough Field. If there was ever a more perfect movie to screen the week of the Preakness, we don't know what it is. Wednesday the 13th brings Paint & Pop at the Laurel Armory. Thursday the 14th, Heavenly Blessed performs at Montpelier Arts Center. Friday the 15th — the night before the race — Music at the Mansion runs from 5:30 to 8:30 PM at Gude Mansion. And on race day itself, Saturday May 16th, the Montpelier Arts Center presents Voices from the Past: Black Music of the Colonial Period and Forgotten Patriots at 4:00 PM — a performance that puts Maryland's deepest history in conversation with one of its grandest sporting traditions.

What we don't yet know — and what residents near the track should still be pressing for — are the specific traffic management and road closure plans for May 16th. If you live within a few miles of Laurel Race Track Road, those details matter. Check cityoflaurel.org/saddleup regularly as race day approaches and plan accordingly.

Last year's Main Street Festival ended with an explosion, a fire, an arrest, and a group of teenagers brawling in the street. This year's was the antidote to all of it. On Saturday, May 2nd, the 45th Annual Laurel Main Street Festival unfolded under clear skies and warm spring sunshine — one of those days that reminds a city what it's actually capable of when everything goes right.

The day opened, as it always does, with the parade down Main Street — and this year's Grand Marshal was Maureen Rogers, a longtime member of the Laurel Board of Trade who has given years of service to the organization that makes the festival possible. Rogers was honored at Laurel Mill Playhouse before leading the procession down the heart of Laurel's historic downtown. It was a fitting tribute: someone who has worked behind the scenes for years, finally in the spotlight she's long deserved. The festival itself ran from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM, filling Main Street with vendors, live music, food, families, and the kind of foot traffic that local businesses spend the rest of the year hoping to replicate.

The Laurel Board of Trade organized and sponsored the event, as it has for four and a half decades, with support from the City of Laurel government and the Laurel Police Department — whose visible, calm presence helped ensure the day went exactly as planned. The contrast with 2025 was not lost on anyone who attended both. A festival that had to carry the weight of last year's incidents into this year's planning managed to come out the other side with something to celebrate: a clean day, a full street, a community that showed up and behaved like one.

What the 45th festival should prompt residents and city leaders to ask is a forward-looking question: what does the 50th look like? With five years to plan, there's an opportunity to think bigger — more programming, deeper business participation, a higher national profile — and to build on the momentum of a year when Laurel proved it could host an event of this scale without incident.

Capitol Technology University in Laurel will host Maryland's first major blockchain career conference beginning July 13, 2026. The five-day event — Maryland Blockchain & Career Week — is organized by the Maryland Blockchain Association and designed to reach a wide audience: high school students, adult career changers, legal and compliance professionals, business owners, retirees, and families. The connecting thread is the state's rapidly growing demand for blockchain-literate talent, and the conference is built explicitly around workforce development, not just technology enthusiasm.

The speaker lineup underscores how seriously this event is being taken. SEC Commissioner Hester M. Peirce — who leads the Securities and Exchange Commission's Crypto Task Force and is one of the most prominent regulatory voices in the digital asset space — will deliver remarks specifically to high school students as part of the programming. State officials and legislative staff will participate in workforce and technology-focused sessions throughout the week. That a sitting SEC Commissioner is coming to Laurel to speak to teenagers about blockchain careers is not something that happens at every conference. It's a signal that the organizers have built something with real institutional weight behind it.

For Laurel residents, this is worth paying attention to for a specific reason: Capitol Technology University, right here in Laurel, is the educational partner for the event. Founded in 1927 and nationally accredited, CapTech offers undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral programs in computer science, cybersecurity, and engineering — and it's positioning itself as the anchor institution for this kind of emerging-field career development in the region. If you have a teenager interested in technology and careers, or if you're a professional thinking about where the workforce is heading, this conference is a genuine local resource.

More information and registration details are available at marylandblockchainassociation.org. The question Laurel residents should be asking: is the city actively partnering with CapTech to ensure local students and residents — not just attendees from across the region — have priority access and awareness of what's happening in their own backyard?

The Laurel Police Department's annual Cops Camp is back for 2026, and registration is open right now. The camp runs August 17 to 21 from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM at Gude Park, 8300 Mulberry Street in Laurel, and is open to children ages 6 to 13. The cost is $200 per camper. There are a maximum of 80 spots, and the department is clear: this camp fills up quickly, so registration should happen as soon as possible.

Cops Camp is a week-long, hands-on experience where kids spend their days with Laurel Police officers learning about different aspects of police work — from K9 demonstrations and Evidence Collection and Processing to an Emergency Response Team presentation, swimming with officers, field day, safety talks, and arts and crafts. The point isn't just programming. It's relationship-building: giving children direct, extended contact with officers in a casual, fun setting, at an age when those impressions stick. The city has been running this camp for years, and the community trust it builds is the kind of thing that can't be replicated in a classroom or a single ride-along.

To register, download the three required forms from cityoflaurel.org — the Cops Camp Contract, Medical Information form, and Parental Authorization form — and submit them with a check or money order made out to the City of Laurel. Forms can be mailed or dropped off in person at the Communications window at the police station, 811 Fifth Street. For questions, contact Sergeant Miskovish or PFC Jackson at 301-498-0092. Teens ages 14 to 18 can also apply to serve as Junior Counselors — email PFC Jackson at [email protected]. Limited spots available for that role as well.

⭐ Movie Night — Secretariat 📅 Tuesday, May 12 · 8:00 PM 📍 Alice B. McCullough Field, 8th St and Montgomery St, Laurel, MD | The city is screening Secretariat — the story of the greatest racehorse in American history — outdoors, under the sky, four days before the Preakness Stakes runs at Laurel Park. This is either a beautiful coincidence or the best programming decision of the spring. Either way: bring a blanket, bring the kids, and consider it your pregame for race day.

⭐ Music on Main 📅 Friday, May 8 · 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM 📍 Laurel Quill Lot, Main Street, Laurel, MD | A free outdoor concert on Main Street as the Preakness season hits its final stretch. This is what community looks like on a Friday evening in May — show up and enjoy it.

⭐ Mother's Day Yoga Retreat 📅 Sunday, May 10 · 1:00 PM 📍 The Mansion at Laurel, 13910 Laurel Lakes Ave, Laurel, MD | A yoga retreat at one of Laurel's most beautiful venues, on Mother's Day itself. Still a strong gift idea if you're reading this in time.

Also this week:

Planning ahead? Here are 4 events coming up through Preakness day, May 16th.

⭐ Music at the Mansion 📅 Friday, May 15 · 5:30 PM to 8:30 PM 📍 Gude Mansion, 13910 Laurel Lakes Ave, Laurel, MD | The night before the Preakness, live music at the Mansion. If you need a way to mark the eve of the biggest sporting event this city has hosted in years, this is it. A warm Friday evening, one of Laurel's most distinctive venues, and a city that's about to be on everyone's radar.

⭐ Voices from the Past: Black Music of the Colonial Period and Forgotten Patriots 📅 Saturday, May 16 · 4:00 PM to 5:00 PM 📍 Montpelier Arts Center, 9652 Muirkirk Rd, Laurel, MD | On the same afternoon that Preakness 151 runs at Laurel Park, Montpelier Arts Center presents a performance recovering the Black musical traditions of colonial America and honoring forgotten patriots. The juxtaposition is not incidental — it's Laurel holding two kinds of history at once, on the same day, in the same city. This one deserves an audience.

Other events:

We're in the final stretch now. Ten days to the Preakness, a full week of events building the energy, a blockchain conference bringing national figures to a university that most people in the region still haven't discovered, and a city that — when you look at the full calendar — is doing more than hosting a horse race. It's making an argument about what kind of place Laurel is. We'll be here for race day. We'll have the full recap. Stay tuned.

Got an event, story tip, or business we should feature? Just hit reply — I read every response.

See you next week — and Saddle Up, Laurel! 🐴

— Mike Mondy Founder, I❤️LAUREL

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