The Dogwood Arts Festival has occurred every April since 1961 in Knoxville, Tenn. The festival celebrates the city's cultural arts community, beautification efforts, and art education programs. The current festival's events include arts and crafts exhibitions and fairs, the Rhythm N' Blues music festival, a house and garden show, a parade, recreational activities, and the festival's signature attraction, the Dogwood Trails.

The festival's origins can be traced to the 1947 bestselling travel book, Inside U.S.A., in which New York newspaper reporter John Gunther referred to Knoxville as the "ugliest city [he] ever saw in America, with the possible exception of some mill towns in New England." Other visitors to Knoxville and the city's inhabitants had similar comments about the city due to coal dust covering the downtown and surrounding area, among other concerns. However, Gunther's characterization spurred Knoxville citizens to action.

The city's government enacted a community-wide beautification project, which encouraged citizens to plant dogwood trees and other local spring flowering plants in their yards and neighborhoods. Betsey Beeler Creekmore, Martha Ashe, and Betsy Goodson led the Knoxville Garden Club, in collaboration with area civic leaders, the Chamber of Commerce and local school students, in establishing the first Dogwood Trail in the Sequoyah Hills neighborhood in 1955. The driving trail looped around the neighborhood, highlighting homes that featured dogwoods and other flowering plants with especially flattering curb appeal. The Holston Hills neighborhood opened its Dogwood Trail in 1956, with the Fountain City and Lake Forest neighborhood trails opening the following year. Today, Knoxville hosts eight Dogwood Trails and five Dogwood Garden Byways across the city.

An early champion for the Dogwood Trails, Knoxville News Sentinel columnist Carson Brewer proposed a dogwood festival in his column in 1959. He cited Cosby, Tenn.'s successful ramp festival as inspiration for Knoxville's own festival celebrating its indigenous dogwood trees. In 1960, a committee representing government, business, educational and artist interests approved starting an annual arts festival. The Chamber of Commerce and the Junior League of Knoxville sponsored the first festival that would begin the following April. The new festival hosted 28 local groups for a 10-day occasion. It introduced 24 events that included crafts on downtown's Market Square and an Al Hirt Dixieland concert. The festival grew to feature a house and garden show and A Very Special Arts Festival for special needs art students. Previous festivals hosted Navy and Air Force air shows, art and talent contests, fashion shows, debutante balls, sports tournaments, celebrity appearances, and a movie premiere, just to name a few events.

Current festivals phased out several events and focused on existing events that highlighted Knoxville's beautification and artistic efforts. During the 2010s, the festival added Rhythm 'N Blooms; Bazillion Blooms, an initiative to sell and plant dogwood trees across the city; and the Chalk Walk, a street painting festival encouraging artists and students to create chalk art on downtown Knoxville sidewalks.