Looking for a sign it's summer in London? Look no further than Sunfest!

For 31 years, Sunfest has been a festival favourite in London, and as this edition got going Thursday, vendors and organizers say they're ready for a weekend of music and fun.

The free festival runs until Sunday and features 23 Canadian and 23 international performers across five stages, as well as more than 200 food and artisan vendors.

"There's something exciting about this year," Mercedes Caxaj, one of artistic directors, said. "The bands have a really great fusion of genres, telling great stories from around the world that you never really hear about."

Caxaj and her father, Sunfest founder Alfredo Caxaj, have been busy finding new bands to perform at this year's festival. They travel to hear them live and work hard to bring them here to London from all over the world, she said.

Some of the countries represented this year are South Korea, Colombia, Congo and Denmark. Making sure everyone is able to enter Canada is always a challenge and this year has been particularly difficult for visas, Caxaj said.

"Sometimes they get approved, sometimes they don't," she said, adding they do what they can to help, but still have plenty of backup acts at the ready. "What always works out is the fact that we always have 40-plus bands playing at Sunfest. We always have great music."

The first night of the festival goes until 11 p.m. with performers taking the stage at 6. The full performance schedule and festival hours can be found on the Sunfest website.

It's not just the performers who are travelling here for Sunfest. Grilling a batch of jerk chicken and keeping her eye on a pot of simmering oxtail, Marva Farquharson was busy making sure there would be enough food to feed every customer on the first night. It always makes her a bit nervous, she admitted.

"This, to me, is like a food fair," she said. "Everybody comes to eat, eat, eat."

Farquharson is a dual citizen living in Florida but she comes to Sunfest every summer to help out at the Irie Bites Jamaican food stall. She loves coming to London, she said, and feels like the festivals back home aren't as enjoyable.

Adding some lima beans to her pot of oxtail, Farquharson said once she got a break from the grill, she would be doing some rounds of the park to see the other vendors.

Further down the long row of food stalls, La Parrillada was grilling Uruguayan chicken, getting it ready to smoke for the next three hours. The London restaurant serves a variety of Latin American foods and has been coming to Sunfest for the past three years, said Raul Lopez, the owner.

A weekend festival like this is tough work, he said, explaining that they show up at 7:00 a.m. and don't make it home until after 1:00 a.m.

"I'm going to have to lay down and sleep for three days after this one, but it's worth it at the end of the day."