Sinfonia da Camera returns to headline the event, slated to feature John Williams’ Star Wars Suite to celebrate the film’s 50th anniversary. New to The ILLIAC this year is an expansion into Downtown Champaign, where a late night post-symphony lineup will take place. 🎻

This Friday, June 19 at Randolph Street Community Garden, 50 Days of Hope will launch on Juneteenth to build community and kick off 50 consecutive days of awareness and hope. This campaign is a response by community partners who want to make a difference in gun violence.

We’re looking for people who are enthusiastic about the arts in our community and curious to discover more. Whether your interest lies with visual arts, live performance, or literature, we’d love to add your voice to the mix.

A new laboratory is developing at the Carle Illinois College of Medicine, combining cancer treatment and regenerative medicine in the same space for the first time. The Translational Oncology and Regenerative Medicine Laboratory is the world’s first engineering-based college of medicine.

As you’ve surely noticed, there are a lot of Canada geese around lately. Tom wanted to document these majestic creatures as they go about their lives here in Champaign-Urbana, in typical Tom fashion.

Alyssa can't be alone in not being able to imagine Champaign’s breakfast neighborhood without The Original Pancake House. While a national chain, the corner diner has been a breakfast staple of Champaign since 1976—50 years is no small feat.

This week the Editorial Board discusses connecting more with our community, the places that offer unique experiences, and how to actively participate more with our time.

World Cup players will wear friction-engineered cleats made with a microstructure technology from the lab of Illinois Grainger Engineering professor Bill King. Players from England, Germany, and Spain will don the shoes, which are specially engineered for friction.

Climate change is colliding with our highly altered agricultural landscape, exacerbating the tensions between what the land currently is and what it once was. By mid-April, NOAA storm prediction center had bestowed Illinois with the distinction of leading the US in tornados, hail, and wind storms.

“Sonic Sensations” marks the 67th season of the symphony orchestra, led by Maestro Stephen Alltop. Season subscriptions are on sale now through July 24 with tickets ten percent off through then.

Omkar visits Mama's Kitchen in Campustown to cure a little homesickness and an empty stomach.

The long-awaited Pablo’s Tortilleria and Abbarrotes is now open in North Champaign in the plaza with TJ Maxx and The Music Shoppe. The new grocery store is by the same owners as the new-ish food truck Pablo’s Tacos and carries spices, fresh tortillas, and pantry staples.

Retired Champaign librarian Molly MacRae’s newest book, All Shell Breaks Loose, continues the adventures of her Haunted Shell Shop Mystery series by taking readers back to beautiful Ocracoke Island off the North Carolina coast. 🐚

Absurdity, queer love and loss, social grief shared out loud, and a cat that won’t stay put. That is the territory of A Balcony, A Storefront, or A Cat, a one-act play by Shreya Rana that goes up this Thursday evening at the Armory Free Theatre on campus.

The Japan House is hosting a pop-up for Wagashi Day on Tuesday, June 16. Wagashi, or traditional Japanese sweets, are consumed in Japan during the rainy season in June. 🍵

Five towns, five tenderloins. Remington's round up features tenderloin sandwiches from a few area restaurants.

Remington spends a morning with New Prairie Solar at an install for the Illinois Rowing Association's new boathouse and learns more about the Urbana business's processes.

Paxton’s distillery Silver Tree Spirits is hosting a field day event and inviting everyone out to the farm on July 24. The fifth-generation famers will share the grain-to-spirit process with a walk through the fields and a taste of the grains via spirits and tacos.

Urbana has made it official: Ninetta DeBoni is Urbana’s next poet laureate, picked through a competitive review for the 2026–2027 term, and the pick rewards a poet who has spent years chasing what they call the magnificent in the mundane.

Happy Juneteenth! This short work week is long on activities. Eat good food, take a walk, take in some history, watch a play, see a drag show.

This June we’re launching a donor campaign, featuring our friends at Watson’s. For every $25 you donate, you’ll receive $25 in gift cards to Watson’s — yes, $25 for $25. Get some World Cup fuel, something from the food truck, or one of their famous slushies.

The 2026 Illinois Hip Hop Camp concludes this week with a performance part of Friday Night Live. Each year, campers end their weeklong camp performing the original music they’ve created, and you should certainly go check out the talent.

Tune into the new four-part documentary series, “Control, Alt, Innovate: Perspectives on Technological Advancements," that was created by students from University Laboratory High School when episodes three and four air on Sunday, June 14 at 1 p.m. on WILL-AM 580

Chris checks out YoYo's in Mahomet, trying multiple delicious-sounding drinks and pastries. 🥯

June is Pride Month. While we support the celebration of LGBTQ+ pride yearround, this month is a good time to stop by Champaign’s new (and only) lesbian-owned gay bar. This week, Alyssa is thirsty for a gin lemonade at Amy’s Place.

Champaign-Urbana is showing up for Juneteenth, with several events and celebrations taking place across the community. From fashion shows to concerts to parades, here’s how you can participate.

Celebrate Juneteenth! There’s a lot to do before and after, including indoor and outdoor activities, live music, drinks at the zoo, and baseball.

Champaign County Forest Preserves will host a Historical Mythbusters camp, which will allow participants to investigate a series of popular local myths throughout history, including Bigfoot and UFO sightings to local hauntings. That, and their others, are camps we wish we could go to. 🫈

We’ve received multiple inquiries about places to watch the World Cup, because who still has cable and who wants to stay in their house especially when the sport is great about bringing people together? So here are a few options to catch matches. Comment with other places you know of! ⚽️

The recent end of Pandamonium Doughnuts, Industrial Donut, and Carmella's Creme left a big doughnut hole in the Champaign-Urbana food scene. That is, until Royal Donut came along. Read the review of the Champaign location. 🍩

Amy interviews Coalescence Theatre Project's Artistic Director, Don Shandrow, seeking out to know how it all works: why theater, of all the available tools, and why here, in the middle of a state that tends to assume everyone downstate already knows each other.

While we’re a week into Pride Month already, the celebrations are only just beginning. There will be a lot to do in Champaign-Urbana through the end of June, so here are a few things to write down in your planners: Tea with the King & Queen at Spurlock, drag shows, rock climbing, and more.

As the Editorial Board of a hyperlocal magazine that devotes much of its content to championing local business, the ever-expanding reach of giant, national corporations in our area is crushing our souls as well as emptying our pocketbooks.

As part of our community’s Juneteenth celebrations, Illinois Soul and the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts are offering a free concert, and all we have to do is show up and join in the celebration.

Draven went to Illinois Game Con in Bloomington-Normal, a one-day celebration of games that has game tournaments, video game, console, and trading card vendors, a free-play retro game room, local artists, a cosplay competition, and more.

The Traces of Time: Artists of Marm, at the Springer Cultural Center through this Saturday, June 13, is an exhibit about art that marks a particular moment. The work on display leaves a trace through time, and a memory of each piece stays with the viewer.

If you haven’t heard by now, Route 66 turns 100 this year. Bloomington-Normal is marking the occasion the way every centennial should be marked: by painting the sidewalk.

We couldn’t imagine Champaign without Parkland—which is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year— so President Pam Lau answered a few questions about choosing it, its history, and where it’s headed.

Writing for Culture offers a great opportunity to get out and talk to people who make things happen in our community, and experience everything that C-U has to offer.

Over the last two Urbana City Council meetings, hours of public comment on a proposed apartment building at 413–419 W Main Street revealed a stark asymmetry in how our community talks about civic responsibility. Who is Urbana willing to build housing for, and where?

Grovestone has ice cream on the menu once again with flavors of vanilla, chocolate, cookie dough, strawberry, super scoop (rainbow), and guilty pleasure (cashew-caramel-sea salt fudge). The olive oil shop scoops ultra-premium ice cream made for them by a group in Madison, Wisconsin.

It’s a week of treating yourself to flowers, music, and many, many delicious lunches and dinners. Cap it off with some dancing. 🌼

The building was recently listed for sale, but over the weekend, Alyssa confirmed with owner and pizzaiolo Ramin Karimpour it’s the just the building for sale. The downtown pizzeria will remain open.

If you have any flexibility to work outside the office any this summer, take advantage of it.

Happy Pride! There are so many ways to celebrate this month; we will publish guides to activities soon, so keep an eye on the site.

June in Champaign-Urbana is the best. The weather is great, the farmers markets are filling up with delightful produce, we can celebrate the first of our Pride festivals (we celebrate again in the fall), and Juneteenth.

Those who travel Route 66 tend to learn something about themselves. The same is true of audiences who see this year’s iteration of Heartland Theatre Company’s 10-minute play festival.

June brings more produce, more vendors, and more delicious things to eat and drink at the markets. Because the weather won’t be as severe as July and August this month, June is a lovely time to be outside shopping in the maze of our farmers markets.

It’s getting hot, and that calls for some ice cold lemonade. This week, Alyssa is thirsty for The Gigi at Keke’s Beverage Trailer. 🍋

BakeLab is making it an affogato summer. In addition to a BOGO deal on Fridays from 3 to 5 p.m, the cafe and patisserie is hosting Affogato Socials, signups for which are now open. 🍨