Seattle’s beloved Bumbershoot Festival will return on Labor Day weekend after a three-year hiatus and major changes involving its production and curation. The lineup will be announced in the coming weeks for the event, which will take place in and around the Seattle Center on Sept. 2-3 and will be celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2023.
Bumbershoot was produced by local nonprofit One Reel from 1980-2019, but worldwide concert promoter AEG Presents was brought in as a partner in 2015 in an attempt to reverse the event’s longstanding financial issues. The festival has not been staged since 2019 when it was headlined by the Lumineers, Tyler, the Creator, Rezz, Louis the Child, and H.E.R.
Moving forward, Bumbershoot will be produced by New Rising Sun, headed by Seattle cultural veterans Steven Severin, Greg Lundgren, and Joe Paganelli. “We heard from our community and took action — fulfilling our promise of affordability and inclusivity,” Severin says. “When re-imagining our festival for this return, we examined everything through an arts lens and expanded upon what art is and can be. We look forward to sharing our vision this Labor Day weekend.”
Reinforcing Bumbershoot’s local focus, the festival is teaming with Amazon to offer $50 single-day tickets and an $85 two-day pass, which is half the price of entry in 2019. Nonprofit partner Third Stone and Amazon are also distributing 5,000 free tickets to nonprofits and people in underserved communities. Tickets go on sale Friday (Feb. 24) at 10 a.m. PT through Bumbershoot.com.
Although the lineup will not be announced for a bit, Bumbershoot has announced details of some of its programming, including Out of Sight, a group visual art show featuring work from Pacific Northwest-based artists. A Bumbershoot 50th anniversary retrospective will also be held at the Art Not Terminal.
Separate “creative zones” will include a fashion district, a nail art dome, professional wrestling in the Recess District, a witch temple, pole dancing, a cat circus, and the art and technology program BEYOND, curated by Sandy Cioffi and Gretchen Burger of Fearless.
