Special Event Grants Program

The DDB’s Special Event Grants Program supports diverse arts and cultural opportunities to encourage a variety of entertainment within the area. The purpose of this program is to provide funding through grants to support events.

Events held in the downtown area serves to bring together a wide variety of people, both locally and nationally, to experience engaged programming that will help to build social connections and strengthen the economic development of the area.  

Applications for events taking place November 2024 - April 2025 will open on July 1, 2024.

An 18A Special Events Permit is required when events involving more than 100 people will take place on city property or is held on other property which impacts adjacent streets, sidewalks, or rights-of-way. A Special Event Permit is the official document authorizing the performance of an event on city property. To obtain this permit, applicants must submit a completed application, meet requirements, and submit a non-refundable application fee to the City of Orlando.

For an event to be eligible it must:

  • Occur entirely within the downtown CRA boundaries(PDF, 544KB) (if an event has multiple locations, the CRA will only consider funding the event portion occurring within the Area)
  • Be open to the public
  • Meet the objectives of the DTOutlook and the special event definition stated above
  • Have attendance of more than 10,000 people
  • Occur after approval of any funding under this Program
  • Event must not have received funding under the CRA Small Special Events Program in the same calendar year

 View Large Special Event Program(PDF, 182KB) guidelines. 

For an event to be eligible it must:

  • Occur entirely within the (PDF, 544KB)downtown CRA boundaries(PDF, 544KB) (if an event has multiple locations, the CRA will only consider funding the event portion occurring within the Area)
  • Be open to the public
  • Meet the objectives of the DTOutlook and the special event definition stated above
  • Have attendance of less than 10,000 people
  • Occur after approval of any funding under this Program
  • Event must not have received funding under the CRA’s Large Special Event Program for the same calendar year

View Small Event Program guidelines(PDF, 183KB).