There is a piece of land outside Raleigh where the trails run deep into the tree line, the night rides go until sunrise, and a community that has been building something together for six years shows up every year to prove that it is real. The laser shows go up in the dark. The hidden stages come alive somewhere in the woods. And on the float track, riders who have been pushing this sport since before anyone called it a sport line up and go.
That place is Oak City Shred Fest, the largest community-run electric unicycle and OneWheel racing festival in the country. And in 2026, it is bigger, more structured, and more deliberately community-first than it has ever been.
How It Started
Oak City Shred Fest did not come from a brand or a business plan. It came from a group of riders in the Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill area who had been riding together for a few years and did not want to lose what they had built.
When Float Life Fest left North Carolina in 2020, Josh Christensen was already deep in building what would become Oak City OneWheel. A recently retired Air Force veteran who had stumbled onto a OneWheel during a walk to the school bus stop, he had a vision that most people around him thought was too big.
"I was the first one to go, nah, that's never going to happen," says David Wolf, Oak City's treasurer and one of its founding members. "What are you talking about? We're just a group of guys having fun. And he was like, no, this could be so much more."
Christensen had the kind of clarity that comes from having to build things from scratch. Twelve years in the Air Force, teaching weapons systems to other units, traveling to Dubai, Hawaii, St. Croix. Then a medical retirement, overnight, and the question of who he was without it.
"I really thought, this is it," Christensen says. "Who am I, really? And the OneWheel, and then finding this community and finding this space, it really changed everything."
He pushed the idea forward, guided it through school as a nonprofit project, and in 2021 Oak City Shredders launched Shred Fest on a private piece of land that a friend of a friend knew about. Below 200 attendees that first year. Over 400 the second. Expectations for 600-plus in recent years and growing every season since.
"Once you're here, you're in," Wolf says. "It doesn't take long for that vibe to just kick into place."
A Community That Runs the Show
Oak City Shred Fest is not a promoter's event. It is not backed by a manufacturer. It is run by the community, for the community, in the most literal sense possible.
"It's not me running the show," Christensen says. "We have our race director. We have our hospitality director. We have our scavenger hunt director. We have all these different people that work together."
The group calls itself the Squirrels: the Oak City volunteer crew that builds trails, sets up stages, designs the scavenger hunt, and keeps the event running across a full week of programming. On a given work day it is not uncommon for 50 people to rotate in and out of the property. Some spend the night. Others bring food on the way in and take nothing on the way out.
Christensen describes his own role the same way the NFL commissioner once described his: protect the shield. His version is just simpler.
"My job is to protect the Acorn," he says. "To protect the integrity of the club. Everything else is just taking care of what follows from that."
The Float Track and the Qualifier Races by Amped Electric Games
Amped Electric Games will be managing the races this year. Thursday and Friday's race times will be tracked using Zone4, with their fastest combined Float Track and Qualifier track being used to determine their sanctioned USA EUC race time.
Saturday will feature a finals race on the Float Track to determine venue winners in the following classes:
Onewheel: Pro, Clydesdale, Legends, Teen, and Grom
EUC: Pro, Amateur, Novice, Teen, and Grom
The float track itself carries serious new hardware in 2026. Rolling Thunder, the massive whale-tail feature introduced last year that nearly got gapped by Lucen, is now a mandatory element of every race lap. Hoppy Hill is still there. The big boulder feature is still there. The only casualty was the rock garden on the qualifier, removed for water management reasons.
The Eight-Hour Race Is the Main Event
The biggest structural change at Shred Fest 2026 is where the spotlight falls. This year the centerpiece of the weekend is the eight-hour endurance race: it gets the live stream, the prize money, and the biggest crowd.
The format is borrowed from Lemans-style motorsport. Teams of up to five riders share six devices. Riders swap in and out through a pit lane. One mistake does not end your race. The course stays open. You come back, swap out, and keep going.
"Every single person that comes off that race is saying this is the most fun they have ever had on their board," Christensen says.
EUC teams and OneWheel teams compete in separate categories. Testing showed EUC teams finishing consistently two full laps ahead of OneWheel teams, making a combined division impractical. Both share the same course and the same energy. Thanks to a personal sponsorship from community member Dan Cobar, the winning EUC team takes home a minimum of $1,000.
The trick competition runs first, in the morning, with natural light for the first time in years. The live stream picks up from there and carries through the full eight hours. Riders waiting between stints can still use the trick park throughout.
A Week, Not a Weekend
If you think Shred Fest is a Saturday race, you have not been paying attention.
The official event runs Thursday through Saturday. But thanks to an agreement with the landowner, early-access camping opens again on Tuesday and Wednesday, meaning the full experience spans five days.
Tuesday night is the famous Jill ride, a group roll through the Raleigh area that recently drew 50 riders and shows no sign of slowing. Wednesday night is another local ride. Thursday afternoon is choose-your-own-adventure: trails, downtown, ebikes, EUCs, all of it converging at the Raleigh Brewing Company before a costumed group ride through downtown.
Friday night is the Clayton ride, now run by Jeremy, with full backing from the City of Clayton. The city hands over a power tower normally reserved for food trucks, wired up by Jared (Electrolytes) so riders can charge and go back out again. It is a tradition with its own gravity now.
Thursday night runs into something new: an all-night EUC ride with no planned cutoff.
"I think there's going to be some that are going to ride until the sun comes up," Christensen says.
Festival, Family, and Hidden Stages in the Woods
Racing is the spine of the event. The community built everything else around it.
The big market, a giant covered structure first deployed at the Acorn Rally, returns to keep vendors and the crowd going regardless of weather. The scavenger hunt has leveled up: this year the Squirrels have hidden NFC tap points across the property, so finding one tells your phone on the spot what you won.
Somewhere in the woods, there are hidden stages. The Squirrels built a small performance space inside the tree line that functioned as a pop-up casino last year. This year it becomes a live music venue, with artists from inside the community performing through the night.
For families, 2026 is the year Shred Fest formally expands its reach. Carolyn, now serving as the event's family director, is building programming specifically designed for kids and non-riders. Noah Vi has created buildable OneWheel models, Lego-scale with real skateboard bearings and full color customization, available at the event. The scavenger hunt already works well for kids. The trick park, the pit bikes, and the app-based racing give younger riders something to chase all weekend.
"Bring your wife, bring your kids," Christensen says without hesitation.
Pit Bikes, Electric Unicycles, Onewheels, VESCs, and Everything Else
One of the things that has always set Shred Fest apart is its refusal to be a single-discipline event.
OneWheels are the core. Electric unicycle riders are a growing and increasingly sponsored part of the program. Vesks are welcome. And this year, thanks to Zoo Cycles, pit bikes return with a proper race format. The Ebox bikes top out around 35 miles per hour and have been tuned down from factory settings because full throttle lifts the front wheel fast. They were the surprise hit of the Acorn Rally.
EUC riders: Oak City Shred Fest is a stop on the 2026 USA EUC National Championship Circuit. Register free at usaeuc.com to have your electric unicycle racing results count toward the national standings.
Part of Something Larger
2026 marks the first year Oak City Shred Fest is part of a national sanctioning structure. The event joins the USA EUC National Championship Circuit alongside Seek n Shred, Let It Ride, Northwest Electric Fest, and other stops across the country, with points from all events pooling toward a national electric unicycle racing standings.
Christensen sees the development as confirmation of what the community has been building toward.
"This is now the community saying, hey, we need this," he says. "This is a third-party kind of validation to all of this. And I think that's really exciting."
Plans for a parallel USA FLT sanctioning body covering float riding are in development, with early conversations underway with key event organizers and community figures across the country.
EUC riders: Register free at usaeuc.com to have your Shred Fest results count toward the 2026 USA EUC National Championship Circuit standings.
Onewheel riders: Register free at usaflt.com to have your Shred Fest results count toward the 2026 USA FLT National Championship Circuit standings.
