SACRAMENTO – GoldenSky Country Music Festival will take a hiatus in 2025 with plans to return in 2026 "even stronger." The country music festival spent three years in Sacramento's Discovery Park in October. Last year, the festival expanded from two days to three days. "After three incredible years of country music under the Sacramento sky, we've made the decision to press pause on GoldenSky in 2025 as we set our sights on an even bigger and better return in 2026," a statement from an Instagram post by GoldenSky said.
Last year's festival, which ran from October 18-20 at Discovery Park, featured headliners such as Luke Bryan, Thomas Rhett, Keith Urban, Ashley McBryde, Bailey Zimmerman and Riley Green.
The event brought 75,000 music fans to Sacramento, in 2024 and with it, a $14 million economic boost to the area. It was part of an October full of events in the city of Sacramento, including Aftershock and the Ironman competition.The President and CEO of Visit Sacramento, Mike Testa, told CBS13 it's a loss to the region not to have the festival, but that events like the X Games, would bring in visitors and an economic boost of their own.
"Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. This gives us the opportunity to recalibrate it, look at it a little bit differently, try to make it more appealing to a wider audience than just a country audience," Testa said. Testa said there are a number of country music festivals that announced a hiatus this year and that there are multiple festivals across the country competing for the same headliners. "We certainly had the strong artists last year in the lineup, but these things [festivals] are not slam dunks. If music festivals were easy, everybody would put them on," Testa said. The team behind the festival, Danny Wimmer Presents, is the same company behind Aftershock, a festival in its 12th year in Sacramento.
After three incredible years of GoldenSky, we've made the difficult decision to take a step back in 2025 so we can return even stronger in 2026. We believe in the brand we're building and know our fans deserve the highest-quality festival. Since day one, we've been committed to delivering the best possible lineup at the most affordable price to create the ultimate festival experience. When that doesn't feel attainable, we will always prioritize our fans and their experience first.
We also recognize how much this festival means to the Sacramento community, and we don't take that lightly. This wasn't an easy decision, but it's one we made with both our fans and the local community in mind. Our goal is to build a festival that stands the test of time, and sometimes that means taking a step back to realign and refocus before moving forward.
With our sights set on 2026, we're already putting in the work to ensure GoldenSky returns better than ever. We can't wait to continue what we started—bigger, stronger, and more memorable than ever before.
-Chamie McCurry, General Manager of Danny Wimmer Presents, producer of GoldenSky
GoldenSky is just one part of Sacramento's plan to become a "City of Festivals," an initiative launched in 2022 aimed at creating more festivals around town. Looking back at festival growth, Aftershock started as a one-day festival with 11,700 attendees. Last year, there were 160,000 people from 32 countries, over the span of four days. "I'd much rather see them take a year off than have a really bad year and never come back," Testa said. On the same day as the cancelation announcement, country music fans attended a sold-out show at the Ace of Spades, a music venue in Midtown Sacramento. CBS13 spoke to fans, many who attended GoldenSky in the last three years, who said they were disappointed for the loss. Morgan Wallen, Tyler Childers, and Zach Bryan were names multiple fans told CBS13 they would like to see headline GoldenSky in 2026.
"I love GoldenSky because you can see a bunch of artists for less than the price of one would be. Absolutely heartbroken, I've gone all three years," said Aubrey Johnson, a country music fan in Sacramento.
Also on Thursday, Western Festival organizers announced that this year's event has been canceled.
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