Bonnaroo announces 2026 festival after abrupt 2025 cancellation: Here's what to know
After extreme flooding caused a mid-festival cancellation of the 2025 music and arts event, organizers remained mum on new dates, fueling speculation that the festival might not happen in 2026.
Those rumors were quashed this week, however, when organizers behind the four-day event in Tennessee announced Bonnaroo would return next year, running from June 11-14.
After asking fans of the festival to complete surveys, organizers said in a July 17 Instagram post that they had taken in the feedback and planned the future of the festival accordingly.
"We appreciate your feedback on future Bonnaroo dates, and we heard you loud and clear that your strong preference is to keep Bonnaroo in June," the announcement stated.
Bonnaroo Music Festival canceled due to severe weather, flooding: Refunds and info
What to expect from Bonnaroo 2026
The festival may look slightly different next year, however. Here's a rundown on the changes:
In an email from Bonnaroo to The Tennessean, part of the USA TODAY NETWORK, organizers said after the festival was cancelled in 2021, due to Hurricane Ida, they consulted with drainage and land management experts to improve conditions on The Farm in the event of heavy, sustained rain.
"We created a multimillion-dollar, multi-year plan and have been tackling projects post-festival each year," they said in the email. "These improvements have helped, but there is still more work to do. In the 2025/2026 off-season, we'll be dedicating an additional multimillion-dollar budget and initiating improvements that prioritize the campgrounds and other areas affected by the extreme weather in 2025."
Organizers added: "Some of these projects will include reseeding the property, continuing to increase access roads within the campgrounds, adding more drainage and reinforcing primary water runoff pathways."
Bonnaroo 2025 cancellation sparks controversy among fans
On the heels of the 2025 cancellation, festival organizers initially revealed they would refund 75% of ticket costs to festival goers. That prompted a petition at change.org by Kaitlyn Ziegler, calling on Live Nation — the festival's promoter — to issue 100% refunds for the cancellation instead of the 75% refunds that were promised.
The festival later announced it would issue full refunds.
Following Bonnaroo's announcement of its 2026 edition, fans' responses on social media were mixed. Some expressed frustration with the changes to entry times and stage locations, while others expressed gratitude toward organizers for not skipping a year.
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