02A short history of the music festival

The short version: The outdoor festival as most people know it - a long bill of acts, more than one day, a resort town or a field, a ticket sold by the day - is usually traced to Newport, Rhode Island, in 1954, though Los Angeles had an annual jazz event before that.⁴ The late 1960s showed both the pull of the idea and the cost of losing control of it: Woodstock drew an estimated 460,000 to 500,000 people in 1969 against a plan for about 50,000.⁵ Britain and Denmark then made the camping festival an annual event, and the form has since toured, settled into destination sites, boomed on dance music, stopped for the pandemic and, since 2023, been squeezed hard: one UK trade body counted a record 78 festivals lost in 2024.³

Where did the music festival start?

The modern festival template started in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1954, paid for by a society couple. Elaine and Louis Lorillard financed a jazz weekend at the Newport Casino in 1954 and hired George Wein to organize it; it was billed as the "First Annual American Jazz Festival," and about 13,000 people came over two days (Wikipedia figure).⁴ Opening night was July 17, 1954, with tickets at "$3 to $5" (1954, reported) and a bill of Billie Holiday, Dizzy Gillespie, Gerry Mulligan, Oscar Peterson and the Modern Jazz Quartet; the next night brought Ella Fitzgerald and a Count Basie tribute.⁶

The "first festival" title is disputed. Wikipedia notes that "earlier large-scale annual jazz festivals had already been established," pointing to the Cavalcade of Jazz at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles, which started in 1945.⁴ What Newport did set was the shape: a fixed summer date, a destination town, a bill long enough to fill a weekend, and a name you could sell again next year.

Newport also produced an early lesson about the gate. In 1960, sold-out crowds who could not get in rioted; "Some 200 people were arrested, a town record," the National Guard was called and the last two days were canceled. Charles Mingus and Max Roach ran a rival festival nearby the same weekend.⁴

What happened when Dylan went electric at Newport?

On July 25, 1965, Bob Dylan played his first "plugged-in" professional live set at Newport Folk, backed by members of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, and gave "Like a Rolling Stone" its first public performance.⁷ The booing is the famous part, and the accounts do not agree. Wikipedia says it came from "a small number of folk 'purists'" and that eyewitness reaction was "generally quite enthusiastic."⁷

Newport Folk had started in 1959 at Freebody Park, founded by George Wein, Albert Grossman, Pete Seeger, Theodore Bikel and Oscar Brand.⁷ It was far from continuous. It did not run in 1961-1962 or from 1970 to 1984, and came back in 1985 at Fort Adams.⁷

In New England: what Newport looks like now

As of 2026, both Newport festivals run at Fort Adams State Park under the same non-profit owner. The jazz festival moved to New York City in 1972, came back to Newport at Fort Adams in 1981, and since 2011 has been run by the Newport Festivals Foundation, which also runs the folk festival.⁴ That is a different model from the promoter-owned majors: the surplus goes to a foundation rather than shareholders.

Demand is not the problem. Newport Folk sold out all three days "months in advance" in 2014 and every year after that through 2023, according to Wikipedia.⁷

Fort Adams is small by big-festival standards: Rhode Island's governor's office described capacity crowds there as 10,000 in 2023.⁸ Boston Calling, the region's other big name, debuted at Boston's City Hall Plaza in May 2013 with early crowds of about 20,000-22,000 (Wikipedia figure);⁹ the New England section tells both stories in full.

What made Monterey Pop different?

Monterey Pop ran like a benefit: the artists played for free and revenue went to charity, with one exception on the festival's side - Ravi Shankar, who was paid $3,000 (1967).¹⁰ The Monterey International Pop Festival (June 16-18, 1967, Monterey County Fairgrounds) was put together in seven weeks by John Phillips, Lou Adler, Alan Pariser and Derek Taylor.¹⁰

It is remembered as a launch pad. Monterey gave the Jimi Hendrix Experience and the Who their first major US appearances and Janis Joplin her first large-scale show.¹⁰ The crowd numbers are loose: estimates run from 25,000 to 90,000, against an arena approved for 7,000 that held about 8,500 on Saturday night, with tickets from $3 to $6.50 (1967, Wikipedia figures).¹⁰

How many people went to Woodstock, and did it lose money?

An estimated 460,000 to 500,000 people went to Woodstock, against a plan for about 50,000, and yes, it left its backers deep in debt. It ran August 15-18, 1969 - it was scheduled to end on the 17th - on Max Yasgur's dairy farm in Bethel, New York, with 32 acts. The promoters, trading as Woodstock Ventures, were Michael Lang, Artie Kornfeld, Joel Rosenman and John P. Roberts.⁵

Tickets were $18 in advance and $24 at the gate (1969), and about 186,000 advance tickets were sold. It became a "free concert" because the fences and ticket booths were not finished by opening day.⁵ Three deaths were recorded.⁵

As a ticketed event it was a disaster for the people who paid for it. Roberts and Rosenman were left near ruin and faced about 80 lawsuits; earnings from the film and the soundtrack album eventually paid off $1.4 million in debt and the settlements.⁵ That is an early version of a lesson the business still uses: the rights to film and record a festival can be worth as much as the gate.

What happened at Altamont?

Four months after Woodstock, a free concert at Altamont Speedway near Livermore, California, ended with four deaths. UPI's report two days later put the crowd at "upwards of 300,000" and recorded the deaths - Meredith Hunter, 18, stabbed near the stage during the Rolling Stones' set; one drowning; and two men struck by a car - as well as two births. Hells Angels attacked people near the stage.¹¹

The lesson the business took is about planning, and the safety section follows it to the present: a free show put together at speed, in front of a crowd that size, with security near the stage that made things worse. The events that lasted were the ones that planned for the crowd they would actually get.

How did Britain end up with the camping festival?

The American 1960s events were mostly one-offs; the British ones came back every year, and the camping festival grew out of that habit.

Isle of Wight 1970 (August 26-30, Afton Down) was the biggest crowd of the era: Guinness World Records estimated 600,000 to 700,000 people. When it became clear there would be no profit, the organizers declared it a free festival.¹² The response was legal. The Isle of Wight County Council Act 1971 added sections "designed to control any further large overnight gatherings," and the island had no event of its kind for 32 years.¹²

Glastonbury started the same year, much smaller. Michael Eavis held the first one in September 1970, the day after Jimi Hendrix died: £1 a ticket, free milk from the farm, 1,500 people, and a bill with Marc Bolan, Al Stewart and Quintessence (official history).¹³ It was a one-day "Pop, Folk & Blues" event.¹⁴ In 1971 it was renamed Glastonbury Fair and the first Pyramid Stage went up.¹⁵

Reading has the same jazz-to-rock arc as Newport. It began as the National Jazz Festival in August 1961 at Richmond Athletic Ground, became the National Jazz and Blues Festival in 1965, moved through Windsor, Kempton Park (1968) and Plumpton (1969), and settled in Reading in 1971. A second site at Leeds was added in 1999; the local council canceled the 1984 and 1985 events.¹⁶

Why does Glastonbury take a year off?

Glastonbury takes planned fallow years - years with no festival - to "give the land, locals, and organisers a break." The first was 1988. The 1991 fallow year followed clashes between travelers and security in 1990, and further fallow years came in 1996, 2001, 2006, 2012 and 2018. In 2020 (canceled March 18) and 2021 (canceled January 21) Covid forced what the fan archive calls an "enforced fallow year."¹⁵

2026 is a fallow year. The next festival is set for June 23-27, 2027, on a 900-acre (about 364-hectare) dairy farm that hosts about 200,000 people (reported).¹⁷ For scale against 1970: in 2003 a ticket was £150, 150,000 tickets were on offer and "more than £1m" was raised for charity (2003, reported by the Daily Mirror).¹⁴

Elsewhere in the world: Roskilde and the non-profit model

Denmark's Roskilde started on August 28-29, 1971 as the "Sound Festival," with 10,000 to 13,000 people paying 30 Danish kroner (1971). Its founders were Mogens Sandfær, Jesper Switzer Møller and promoter Carl Fischer.¹⁸ It is run by the Roskilde Foundation as a non-profit that "still relies heavily on thousands of volunteers," with attendance of more than 130,000 in 2024 and a ticket of 2,600 kroner in 2026 (Wikipedia figures).¹⁸

Roskilde is also the festival the safety world studies. On June 30, 2000, a crowd crush at the Orange Stage during Pearl Jam's set killed nine people and injured 26.¹⁸

What was the touring festival?

Lollapalooza turned the festival into a package tour: one bill, moving city to city. It opened on July 18, 1991, at Compton Terrace in Arizona, credited to Perry Farrell working with booking agents including Marc Geiger, and began as a farewell tour for Jane's Addiction.¹⁹ Sources differ on whether to call that first city Chandler or Tempe; Compton Terrace sits between the two.

The 1991 tour ran 20 dates through July and August with Jane's Addiction, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Nine Inch Nails, Living Colour, Butthole Surfers, Rollins Band, Fishbone, Ice-T with Body Count and Violent Femmes. It toured until 1997 and came back in 2005 as a yearly event in Chicago.²⁰ In Grant Park it "typically welcomes 100,000 daily attendees" (reported, 2021).²¹

What is a destination festival?

Between about 1997 and 2005 a new kind of festival appeared: one fixed site, often with camping, sold as a trip as much as a show. Coachella, first held in 1999, belongs in this group; its story is told in full in the sister guide to Coachella.

Fuji Rock had the roughest start. The 1997 edition at Fuji Tenjinyama Ski Resort was hit by a typhoon on day one, day two was canceled and there were cases of hypothermia. After a year in Tokyo, it has run for three days at Naeba, Niigata, since 1999, organized by Smash with the stated aim of being "The cleanest festival in the world." It drew a record 140,000 over three days in 2012 and 122,000 in 2025 (Wikipedia figures).²²

Primavera Sound opened on April 28, 2001 at Poble Espanyol in Barcelona with 7,700 people, moved in 2005 to the Parc del Fòrum (a site "seven times larger"), and added Porto from 2012.²³ Bonnaroo's first edition (June 21-23, 2002) sold "More than 70,000 tickets" in advance.²⁴ It was founded by Superfly and AC Entertainment (Ashley Capps) with Coran Capshaw and Chip Hooper on a 700-acre (about 283-hectare) farm in Manchester, Tennessee.²⁵

Tomorrowland began in August 2005 at De Schorre in Boom, Belgium, with about 10,000 people. It reached 180,000 in 2010 and 400,000 across two weekends from 2017, with a capacity of 200,000 per weekend (Wikipedia figures).²⁶ It sold the trip outright: its Global Journey packages with Brussels Airlines carried 2,000 passengers from 17 cities in 2012 and 8,000 from 67 cities in 2013.²⁶

Why is EDC in Las Vegas?

EDC moved to Las Vegas in 2011 after Los Angeles capped its crowd following a teenager's death after the 2010 event. Insomniac was founded in October 1993 and held the first Electric Daisy Carnival in 1997 at the Shrine Expo Hall in Los Angeles.²⁷ By 2010 EDC drew "more than 160,000" people to the Los Angeles Coliseum over two days, according to the Las Vegas Sun.²⁸

That year a 15-year-old, Sasha Rodriguez, died of an ecstasy overdose after attending. The Coliseum Commission then capped capacity at 75,000 per day, and EDC left Los Angeles (reported, February 2011).²⁸ It moved to Las Vegas Motor Speedway in 2011, and Insomniac reports 465,000 attendees over three days in 2019 (official).²⁷

What happened during the EDM boom?

Electronic dance music drove the biggest growth and the biggest deal-making of the 2010s. Robert F. X. Sillerman revived SFX Entertainment, a name he had first used in 1996, in June 2012 and bought fast: Beatport in February 2013, a 75% stake in ID&T (Tomorrowland's organizer) announced the following month, Made Event (Electric Zoo) and i-Motion ($21 million) in November 2013, and 75% of Paylogic that December. SFX began trading on NASDAQ on October 9, 2013.²⁹ It filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on February 1, 2016, and emerged that December as the private company LiveStyle after cutting $400 million of debt; ID&T went to Superstruct in 2021, in a deal that excluded Tomorrowland.²⁹

Live Nation took a different route. It confirmed a partnership with Insomniac in June 2013 without disclosing terms; the Wall Street Journal had reported the month before that Live Nation was about to pay about $50 million for a stake. Insomniac founder Pasquale Rotella said in an online statement that "the Insomniac team, led by myself, will maintain complete creative control of all events" and that "we are still a stand-alone company."³⁰³¹³²

What kinds of festival are there?

Most festivals mix several of these. The labels are this guide's groupings, not formal industry definitions; the examples are sourced.

Music cruises have grown "significantly in the United States since the 1990s."³³ Holy Ship!'s first listed sailing (January 6-9, 2012, on the MSC Poesia, 4,000-plus capacity) sold out in pre-booking, and since its January 2022 return, at a resort in the Riviera Maya, it has been held on land.³⁴

There is no formal definition of a boutique festival. The UK ticket seller Skiddle, in a 2025 article, describes boutique festivals as "characteristically smaller than the likes of Glastonbury or Creamfields" and "often defined as more intimate and independent events involving interesting settings, programmes, and initiatives," and says the definition "varies."³⁵

What happened to festivals during Covid?

Almost every major festival was canceled in 2020. Lollapalooza called off its 2020 edition on June 9 and replaced it with a livestream from July 30 to August 2.³⁶ Coachella first moved from April to October and then lost the October dates when Riverside County's health officer canceled them; about 40% of ticket buyers had asked for refunds (reported, June 2020).³⁷ Glastonbury canceled 2020 on March 18 and 2021 on January 21,¹⁵ and Roskilde canceled both years.¹⁸

US festivals came back in the second half of 2021: Lollapalooza returned July 29 to August 1, 2021 "at full capacity," with proof of vaccination or a negative test required.²¹ Glastonbury and Roskilde waited until 2022. Primavera folded most of its canceled 2020 and 2021 bookings into a two-weekend 2022 edition that drew 460,500 (Wikipedia figure).²³ Not everyone came back: the UK's Association of Independent Festivals counts 96 festivals lost to Covid.³⁸

No official global tally of 2020 cancellations was found. One early private count: as of April 1, 2020, the music analytics company Viberate counted "over 550 music festivals" canceled or postponed because of Covid-19, which it estimated at around 11% of all music festivals (estimate, partial year).³⁹ Pollstar put the live music industry's lost revenue for 2020 at more than $30 billion (estimate, as summarized by Wikipedia).⁴⁰

Why are so many festivals being canceled?

The reasons given vary: tax and low ticket sales in the UK, owner budget cuts and a crowded market in the US, and bad weather. The firmest counts are British. They come from the Association of Independent Festivals (AIF), a trade and lobby group for independent events, so they reflect its members' view.

AIF counted 36 festivals canceled, postponed or closed in 2023 and 72 in 2024 as of late November that year, with 204 "disappeared" since 2019.³⁸ By June 2025 it had revised 2024 to a final 78, a record, and counted 249 lost since 2019 and 39 more lost by June 10, 2025.³ The full 2025 total was 43; in 2026, WOMAD Glasgow became the 20th of the year, citing low ticket sales (reported).⁴¹

AIF's CEO, John Rostron, called it "a devastating period for the UK's festival organisers." The group asked for a "temporary lowering" of VAT on festival tickets from 20% to 5%, which it says "would have saved most of the events that have closed this year" (November 2024).³⁸ In 2025 it proposed a festival tax relief for events under 30,000 capacity, modeled on the reliefs for theaters and orchestras. Secret Garden Party said 2024 would be its last.³

The US has no official count. Linking to the listings site Music Festival Wizard for its 2025 figure, Digital Music News reported in July 2025 that more than 90 festivals had been canceled "in 2025 alone" and over 170 in 2024 - counts the article frames globally rather than as US-only - and named Pitchfork Music Festival, Atlanta's Music Midtown and Connecticut's Soundside among the US losses.⁴² In September 2026 Web Smith of the newsletter 2PM counted roughly 30 US cancellations in 2025 and about 28 in 2026 through early September on the most-cited aggregator's list (estimates), and wrote that "the United States has no official tracker."⁴³

Pitchfork Music Festival ended its Chicago run after 19 years (announced November 11, 2024); supporters blamed budget cuts at owner Condé Nast, while others pointed to "a struggling market for music festivals in general."⁴⁴ Primavera's Los Angeles edition (September 2022) did not continue, which Wikipedia attributes to "an oversaturated American market" and scheduling.²³

Weather adds to the strain. Bonnaroo 2025 was canceled after opening night because of severe weather, and Wikipedia lists its 2026 attendance at about 45,000, against 70,000 in 2024.²⁵ Tomorrowland's 2025 main stage burned on July 16, two days before opening, and a smaller replacement was built by July 18.²⁶

The festival log

Every date in this history, and the rest of the guide, in one scrollable timeline.

Report an error in this section