It may not be too much of an exaggeration to say that 2024 was the year the music festival died. A wave of festivals has been unplugging their microphones and telling pass holders, “Sorry!”

Desert Daze, a psychedelic rock fest in Southern California; Sierra Nevada World Music Festival, a reggae fest in Northern California; Kickoff Jam, a country music festival in Florida; Blue Ridge Rock Festival in Virginia; Sudden Little Thrills, a multigenre festival in Pittsburgh; Float Fest in Austin, Texas; the list of recent cancellations goes on and on.

And it’s not just America. In Europe, festival after festival — from Lollapalooza Paris to the Sideways Festival in Helsinki — has announced cancellations for this year or forever. By one count, over 60 music festivals were canceled in the U.K. this year alone. In Australia, so many festivals were canceled that one magazine there recently asked, “Are the nation’s music festivals extinct?”

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