The Sundance Film Festival is officially coming to Boulder.
The Sundance Institute announced Thursday that it had selected Boulder to host the famous 10-day film festival starting in 2027.
A slow-burn competition for the festival began in earnest last April, when the Sundance Institute, which owns the festival and runs a dozen workshops for filmmakers, put out a request for information. Boulder responded, and submitted a formal proposal in June.
Boulder’s request included a one-time, $1.5 million grant, $250,000 from the Colorado Office of Film, TV and Media over five years, and one-time contributions of $50,000 from the Colorado Tourism Office and $25,000 from Colorado Creative Industries.
House Bill 1005, which is still being considered by lawmakers, would add $34 million in tax incentives to the large pile of grants.
In comparison, Utah allocated somewhere between $1.3 million and $2 million per year to keep the festival in Park City.
Boulder beat out proposals from Atlanta, Cincinnati, Louisville, Kentucky, and Santa Fe, and a combined proposal from Park City and Salt Lake City to start hosting the festival in 2027.
“Boulder offers small-town charm with an engaged community, distinctive natural beauty, and a vibrant arts scene, making it the ideal location for the Festival to grow,” Amanda Kelso, Sundance Institute’s acting CEO, said in an emailed statement. “This is the beginning of a bold, new journey as we invite everyone to be part of our community and to be entertained and inspired. We can’t imagine a better fit than Boulder.”
Colorado goes all in
Colorado has been vying for the festival for years.
In 2023 the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park landed the Sundance Institute Director’s Lab, an invitation-only program where screenwriters and directors hash out their big ideas — digging into scripts, rehearsing, shooting and editing scenes.
At the time, officials were tight-lipped about whether this was a way to lure the film festival to the Rockies from the Wasatch. But the speculation gained traction when then-Sundance Institute CEO Joana Vicente said on a podcast that there are challenges with hosting more than 100,000 visitors at the festival in a busy ski town in January.
January in Boulder, on the other hand, is a time of relatively low occupancy and visitorship, according to the Colorado Tourism Office. The festival is projected to bring around 40,000 to 50,000 visitors to the Front Range.
The tax incentive bill in the legislature creates a new tax credit “only if at least one qualified film festival with a multi-decade operating history and a verifiable track record of attracting 100,000 or more in-person ticket sales and over 10,000 out-of-state and international attendees (global film festival) commences the relocation of the festival to Colorado by January 1, 2026.”
Few other film festivals qualify, and none besides Sundance were eyeing a new home in Colorado.
A homegrown Hollywood
Colorado has spent the past few years building up a film industry that can compete with neighboring states. And that’s exactly what Hollywood wants.
Tax incentives changed the way that movie and TV productions picked out their filming locations beginning in 2002, when Louisiana ramped up its credit program and started pulling in movie productions from the East and West coasts. That comparative — and competitive — angle has been used by the film industry to pit nearby states against one another: Texas versus Oklahoma, New York versus New Jersey, Utah versus Colorado.
The idea is that movies and TV shows require a lot of people, and people spend money on places to stay, to eat, to shop. Locals might be contracted for construction or catering. Aspiring filmmakers can rub shoulders with industry elite. In short, it’s an industry known for creating new worlds — and that potential extends beyond the set.
Last year — around the same time that Boulder submitted its Sundance proposal — the state expanded its tax incentive credit for film, TV and commercial productions to $5 million per year for four years to try to lure more filmmakers to work in Colorado.
Though the incentive is nowhere near the $118 million New Mexico expects to pay out this year in tax incentives, the boost to Colorado’s program makes the state competitive with Wyoming and Utah. All four states currently host some part of the Sundance Institute’s expansive programming — with the Directors Lab in Estes Park, the Native Lab in New Mexico, the Producers Lab in Wyoming and, of course, the festival in Park City.
While film tax incentives are different from the millions that an annual festival stands to generate — especially one with, say, a multi-decade operating history and a verifiable track record of attracting over 10,000 out-of-state and international attendees — the underlying economic idea is the same: attract a bunch of people to spend a bunch of money.
And they will.
To the tune of $13.8 million in state and local tax revenue and $69.7 million in local wages annually, according to the Sundance Institute’s 2024 economic impact report. The report also estimated that money spent directly by attendees came in around $138 million. Out-of-state visitors, about one-third of the festival attendees, spent an average of $735 per day.
“Today’s announcement is a tremendous win for Colorado small businesses. We welcome the Sundance Film Festival making its new home in Boulder,” said state Sen. Mark Baisley in an emailed statement. Baisley, a Woodland Park Republican, co-sponsored the Sundance tax incentive bill. “This will boost sales at restaurants, retailers and other small businesses throughout the region that rely on tourism, bringing much needed revenue to Colorado communities during a quiet time of year.”
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