People gather inside the Bites and Brews tent at Carnaval Maine on the Eastern Prom in 2022. Brianna Soukup/Portland Press Herald

Plans for another Carnaval Maine have melted for now.

The winter festival started in January 2020 on the Portland’s Eastern Promenade. Organizers held the event again in January 2022 and March 2023. They tweaked dates, number of days, program and prices over the years to draw visitors. They previously said Carnaval Maine would return in December 2024, but the event has not materialized.

“We’ve taken a step back,” said Brian Corcoran, CEO of Shamrock Sports and Entertainment, the Portland sales and marketing agency that put on the festival. “While we had hoped to execute an event at the end of this year, we don’t feel confident enough that we can do it the right way. There’s a big appetite in and out of Portland to drive economic impact in the shoulder season, and we’re taking time to assess who could be the right collaborators.”

Shamrock will focus its attention on a different signature event: the Drive Fore Kids celebrity golf tournament in June. The fundraiser started in 2023 and benefits the Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital and Dempsey Center. Corcoran said that tournament demands significant time and resources from his team.

“It has taken on a life of its own,” he said.

Carnaval Maine was started to generate interest in Portland businesses in late winter when sales were often stagnant. It’s modeled loosely on Winter Carnival (sometimes called Carnaval) in Quebec, which has been held annually since the 1950s and draws hundreds of thousands of people to the historic Canadian city.

In Maine, organizers seem to be searching for the right formula. The first Carnaval Maine was three days in January 2020 on the Eastern Promenade. The event was canceled in 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic but returned to the Prom in 2022 for 10 days in February. Organizers reported that year that attendance was 22,000.

In 2023, Shamrock Sports and Entertainment moved Carnaval Maine to the Old Port and scheduled five days of entertainment in March. The focus shifted from outdoor activities to local food and music. The new venue in the parking lot outside DiMillo’s on Commercial Street was supposed to accommodate more people, and Corcoran predicted as many as 20,000 visitors again. But the festival posted in March that 10,800 people attended the event last year.

Collin Atkins carves an ice sculpture at Carnaval Maine on the Eastern Promenade in 2022. Brianna Soukup/Portland Press Herald

Weather was a significant and unpredictable factor every year, Corcoran said. Over three festivals, he found that the most successful events were the ones held inside the climate-controlled igloo.

“I think we had all four seasons at Carnaval a few years ago in one week,” he said with a laugh.

Corcoran said Shamrock would be interested in partnering with another organization in the future to revive a winter festival of some kind.

“We’re hoping it doesn’t die on the vine,” he said. “That’s certainly not our intention.”