The US is home to some of the world’s biggest festivals — think Coachella, Lollapalooza, Bonnaroo, SXSW, Movement, Ultra, Electric Daisy Carnival, and Austin City Limits Music Festival.
But brilliant event organizers introduce their own weird and wonderful festivals every year, so why shouldn’t you?
Creating a festival is a fantastic way to share your passions with others and potentially fill a market gap.
Here at Eventbrite, we power festivals, such as Exodus Festival Las Vegas’ music weekends and Rocky Mountain Highway Music Collaborative’s Annual MeadowGrass Music Festival — and we want to share everything we know to help you put on your first festival, too.
That’s why we’ve created this comprehensive guide on how to start a festival. We’ll cover event organizing guidelines with all of the essential information on how to host a festival, from setting a budget to hiring staff.
Find out how to start a festival
1. Figure out what your festival goals look like
2. Set a realistic festival budget
3. Choose the perfect festival venue
5. Get the right insurance and permits
6. Negotiate your festival line-up
7. Develop a festival marketing plan
8. Recruit and coordinate event staff and volunteers
9. Prep your site and brief your team
Why start a festival?
The music festival market is ripe and growing. In fact, music events are set to rack in $16.98 billion by the end of 2024 compared to $13.86 billion revenue in 2023.
Starting a new festival is also an amazing business opportunity with huge revenue potential. According to researchers at CGA, 52% of festival-goers don’t even have a set budget in mind when they go to festivals.
In fact, in our TRNDS 2024 report, we found that attendees plan to splash as much or more cash on events in 2024 as they did the previous year. But they do expect quality in return, which is what this guide helps you achieve.
Finally, music festivals are a great way to unite and empower communities by bringing like-minded people together to celebrate life and revel in the joy of music. To create common experiences that unite and empower communities and create repeat attendance, you need to understand things like how to set meaningful event goals, choose the right venue, and market your festival to get attention from your type of people (the ones most likely to buy tickets).
We’ll show you exactly what to do.
How to start a festival in 10 steps
Starting a festival requires more than just a cool idea and a business plan. Getting your dream festival up and running takes a lot of work (but it’ll be worth it!).
Read on for ten steps on how to host a festival, along with some pro tips from industry expert Sofia Genders, the previous co-founder of the End of the Road Festival, and inspiration from real Eventbrite creators.
1. Figure out what your festival goals look like
The first step in event planning is to create goals that determine what success means to you.
“Having a clear vision of what you’d love your DIY festival to ultimately look like can keep you on course when unforeseen (and sometimes inevitable) obstacles crop up. It can also help you to decide what you’re willing to compromise on and which aspects are non-negotiable,” explains Genders.
“A great way to start sourcing event ideas is identifying a gap in the market. What festival would you love to attend but doesn’t exist yet? Think about your personal expertise and passions, which can help you pinpoint how you might bring value to such an event. The most unusual and niche events often bring two popular activities or themes together.”
Your goals may be qualitative, quantitative, or a bit of both.
For quantitative goals, you can focus on ticket sales. For example, your festival could set a goal of selling 1,000 tickets within its first month of general sales.
But you can also have more qualitative, non-monetary goals.
For example, when CJ Milan founded Reggae Fest — a large and fast-growing party series — her goal was to create events that didn’t focus on the number of tickets you sell but that attendees have a great time dancing.
The festival quickly exploded in popularity and expanded across several states, including Atlanta and Miami.
Alternatively, you might want to set a goal based on representation, such as booking a line-up comprised of 50:50 female to male performers. These types of qualitative goals might also be important to your target audience.
💡Pro tip: No matter what types of goals you’re setting, your goals should be SMART:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Relevant
- Time-bound
SMART goals make it easier to see whether you’re achieving your objectives.
Once you have your goals, it’s time to move on to your festival budget.
2. Set a realistic festival budget
“Once the plans are in place for your festival, you’ll need to calculate your hosting costs to ensure it’s viable,” explains Genders.
Festivals have a lot of different facets, so you’ll need to include many considerations when setting up a budget for your festival.
When planning a festival, a major cost will be a ‘line item’ (a subcategory) on your festival budget. Here are some of the biggest line items you’ll likely need to include:
- Venue or location rental: Cost will vary depending on the event’s venue. For instance, a stadium or arena could cost over $1,200 daily.
- Talent or entertainment: Prices depend on whether you work with up-and-coming performers or well-known talent. Entertainment agencies, such as EVA, allow you to book performers based on music genre, entertainment type, band setup, etc., costing hundreds to thousands of dollars per performer.
- Catering and associated logistics: Depending on the event type, prices can range from $15 to $25 per person for an event with 50+ attendees or up to $35 per person for 100+ guests.
- Additional facilities: Additional costs, like portable stage hire, can range from $300 to $1,250 daily based on Rent for Event.
- Staffing and volunteer management: Festival site crew can cost $200 to $600 per person daily.
- Equipment rentals: Costs can range from $495 to $2,387 to rent a video wall screen for ground stacking. Lighting equipment, like beam brush lasers, costs up to $5,000 daily.
- Security: Hiring a security manager costs between $300 and $600 daily.
- Local authority permits: Prices will vary from state to state, depending on the size of your festival and what you’re selling. For instance, a permit for an extra-large event in New York costs up to $66,000, and 20% of the total fees vendors pay to participate goes to New York City.
But that’s just the start of planning a festival.
Don’t forget to factor less obvious costs into your budget. Smaller line items might also include:
- Venue decorations
- Office supplies
- Shipping charges
- Transaction fees
- Web costs
- Taxes
💡Pro tip: If you’re setting up a festival planning budget, use an event budget template. It’ll save you time and ensure you don’t forget anything.
3. Choose the perfect festival venue
“Choosing the right venue is a key part of any festival. When thinking of places to hold a music festival, consider how much space you’ll need for your desired number of attendees, plus the necessary facilities — from a bar to plenty of toilets,” says Genders.
“When establishing how to rent land for a festival, it’s essential to work closely with your logistics manager or a team member with experience working with festival sites. Make sure to meet your venue’s owner multiple times before committing to ensure a pleasant working relationship, and seek testimonials if you can.”
When shopping around, factor in each venue’s cost, capacity, and extra accommodations.
For example, how many parking spots will you need? What accessibility requirements do you expect to have on-site?
Ask these questions from the get-go to ensure your festival venue ticks all the boxes.
This is where health and safety need to come into play. “More than ever, health and safety should take top priority at your event. Carry out a risk assessment to figure out what risks your festival might pose,” says Genders.
Safety and accessibility points you should be looking at in the perfect festival venue include things like:
- Enough entrances and exits
- Fire doors
- Hazards like overhead power lines
- Protection from adverse weather
- Proximity to emergency services
But this isn’t an exhaustive list. The items on your health and safety wish list will vary depending on the type of event you plan and where you want to stage your festival.
💡Pro tip: Choose a venue that considers the weather’s unpredictability. We recommend setting up an event cancelation plan just in case the worst happens, like a once-in-a-lifetime storm or flooding, and you need to postpone the event.
Now you have a budget and a predicted cost for your event, the next step is to look for funding.
4. Secure event funding
There are many ways to make your project more financially feasible, from sourcing angel investors to taking out a loan. You can even start selling advance tickets to start making money before your festival starts.
As well as taking on private investors or self-funding your festival, you might be able to secure event sponsorship from a company or a public body to fund part (or all) of your event. For example, Rhythm Foundation secured financial sponsorship from Breezeline for their Miami Beach Youth Music Festival event.
Many brands are worth approaching for partial (or full) sponsorship. If you’re keen to try this route, the best place to start is to write an event sponsorship email.
💡Pro tip: Considering crowdfunding your festival? Platforms such as Kickstarter allow you to invite potential attendees to donate to your event. Concentrate on capturing what makes your event unique, then spread the word about your Kickstarter campaign.
5. Get the right insurance and permits
It’s not the most exciting part of learning how to start a festival, but it’s critical that you submit all the right paperwork before you welcome guests into your venue.
You’ll need a Special Event Permit for events held on public property — such as plazas, roads, and public squares — with over 250 participants. For example, in California, all events involving things like PA systems, amplified music, outside catering companies, etc., must complete a Special Event Permit application and pay a filing fee of $25.
As you might expect, many of these requirements center around event health and safety.
💡Pro tip: When setting up festivals, you’ll need public liability cover and equipment cover as a bare minimum. Most entertainment insurance companies will offer different equipment coverage plans, ranging from $5,000 to $20,000. Use an event insurance comparison website to help you choose the best plan and price.
6. Negotiate your festival line-up
When booking entertainment, start with a wish list based on your event goals and target audience.
“The key to booking the right acts, performers, or speakers for your event is to really know your audience and invest some time into audience segmentation,” says Genders.
“Create the perfect festival line-up by doing your research and finding out which specific events have proved popular with your various segments,” Genders continues. “Consider which would fit best with your overall event theme and values. Having the right acts can make the difference between a mediocre event and a sell-out one.”
For example, Dawn Bistline-Black includes performers with various music genres to cater to a family-friendly audience. However, if you’re hosting a regional jazz festival, your line-up should center on jazz and brass bands. For example, the Institute of Jazz Studies only hires jazz musicians for their jazz festivals.
If you’re staging a breakdancing festival, your line-up will require hip-hop and R&B acts. Event organizer M.C. W.A.R. Promotions hosts annual hip-hop music festivals and only hires performers in this music genre.
Your festival line-up will be a huge line item on your festival budget.
If you’re unsure or don’t have much time to spare on this task, you can commission booking agencies and talent agencies to create shortlists and book entertainers on your behalf. This will remove some friction and free up your time, but it’s another cost in your budget — as the agency will take a commission.
But you can also contact and hire festival acts on your own.
Think about making your event as appealing as possible and building a relationship with your chosen artists and performers. To make a professional impression, send them a festival brief and any other documentation. Consider supporting them in the run-up to your event by attending gigs and sharing on social media.
💡Pro tip: Give yourself plenty of time before your festival to negotiate appropriate fees with booking agents and managers, who will often act on behalf of the artists or speakers. Don’t underestimate the time this can take. You should start the process months in advance to allow for the signing and counter-signing of contracts.
7. Develop a festival marketing plan
After you’ve booked your line-up, it’s time to create a festival marketing plan to promote your event.
There are a few key considerations:
- Choose the proper social media channels: Select the same social channels to promote your event as your target audience uses.
- Develop a posting schedule: Post at regular intervals to keep users warm, and create anticipation for your event to come with teaser clips and announcements.
- Incorporate conventional advertising: Organic posts on social media only have so much reach. Consider budgeting for paid social media ads, Google Ads, or more traditional ad space on relevant websites or publications. Eventbrite Ads help increase conversions by getting more people to click on your event.
- Use email marketing: If you already have contact information from previous customers (and their permission to use those details), email marketing is a great way to spread the word about your event to your target audience to increase ticket sales.
- Send press releases: Issuing festival press releases with exciting details about your event and line-up is an easy way to score free publicity and drive traffic to your festival page.
- Hire influencers: Collaborations with influencers, especially micro-influencers, can be a great and cost-effective way to promote your event to a wide-reaching audience on social media.
“Your marketing and PR strategy is the best way to get the word out about your festival, and a multi-channel strategy will push your event in front of as many people as possible,” says Genders.
“Consider how you can encourage engagement via social channels, using tactics like giveaways to promote sharing and likes.”
As part of your event strategy, you’ll need to optimize your event branding and campaign style so your messaging connects with the event’s target audience.
You should also choose an event management software that fully supports your festival promotion activity.
For example, Eventbrite enables you to sell tickets and manage your social media ads, email marketing, and analytics from one dashboard. This streamlines the festival marketing process, allowing you to control and monitor all your marketing efforts on one platform.
💡Pro tip: Team up with content creators and influencers to further your reach and create useful content around your festival to drive traffic to your event page. You could also explore a mutually beneficial marketing partnership with another company or sponsor, working on a shared social campaign to promote your festival.
Market your event to reach more people
8. Recruit event staff and volunteers
“Festival enthusiasts and volunteers can be a huge help when it comes to on-the-day festival help, such as managing queues and admission,” says Genders.
“However, for organizations and crucial behind-the-scenes aspects, it’s worth hiring people who bring plenty of festival-specific experience.”
The staff vacancies you have to fill depend on the type of festival you organize and the venue you’ve chosen. But generally speaking, you should look for the following individuals/teams:
- Sales staff
- Customer service staff
- Office staff
- Medical staff
- Photographers and videographers
- IT staff
- Equipment technicians
- Cleaning staff
- Security staff
- Concession staff
This isn’t an exhaustive list. Depending on your event’s unique needs, you might need additional roles.
Once you’ve determined which roles require paid staff and which volunteers could handle, you can advertise the positions on job boards like Indeed or LinkedIn.
💡Pro tip: Use volunteer recruiting websites to find the perfect matches for your positions. Try VolunteerMatch, Engage, JustServe, and Do Something. They’re easy to navigate and help you match with qualified volunteers.
9. Prep your site and brief your team
After you’ve appointed staff, it’s time to prep your site and your new team.
That means decorating your venue, ordering and installing the appropriate signage, and getting any temporary facilities, stalls, or vendors in place for the event. You’ll need to arrange early access to your festival venue with the venue manager.
You’ll also need to conduct staff training for your volunteers and paid employees to make sure everybody’s ready to go. Your event staff will be the face of your festival — so arm them with all the necessary tools so guests have an amazing experience.
For example, let’s say you’re working with volunteer stewards. You could organize a couple of short information sessions the week before the event so they know where to be and how to address basic customer questions.
This training should include on-the-day briefings for your team and any contractors you’ll be working with during the festival.
💡Pro tip: Aside from safety, consider making your event sustainable, and be a part of the 61% of event organizers looking to make more eco-friendly events in 2024. “Work out your environmental impact by dividing aspects into categories, such as power consumption and transport. If you’re short on time, concentrate on one key area where you might be able to reduce waste or energy use,” says Genders.
“Make clear and concise plans for how you’ll recycle rubbish on the day, and involve contractors so that everyone is on the same page.”
10. Analyze your results
After the event and you’ve cleaned up the site, it’s time to analyze your results. Utilize an event management platform like Eventbrite, which creates custom data reports to look at areas like your attendance turnout to find out which festival acts were the most popular.
Data analytics will enable you to provide the required measurement to understand whether you achieved your SMART goals — for example, attendance numbers, revenue, and event registrations from social media.
You can optimize future events and create even better guest experiences by weighing successes and failures through data. You’ll also be better positioned to secure funding by illustrating your proven track record using hard numbers.
Consider creating a festival report outlining all the hard numbers from your event, covering things like:
- Your goals
- Ticket sales
- Conversion rates
- Revenues
- Customer reviews
One of the best ways to generate hard data about your festival and find out what your attendees thought is to set up a post-event survey. By emailing your guests a short list of questions about what went well and what didn’t, you’ll have plenty of direct feedback to help you create an even better event next time.
💡Pro tip: You can use Eventbrite’s integrations with Mailchimp to create the survey and then send it to all your registered attendees.
How to start a festival the easy way
Learning how to start a festival is a huge undertaking — even for an experienced event organizer.
But as long as you plan carefully, consider your budget, and find the right event management tools to execute your plan, you should be able to create a unique festival that your guests will love.
With Eventbrite, you can set up a custom event page, create a tiered ticketing system, and start promoting your festival in minutes. You can also connect with other event creators and find inspiration by exploring our community of 800,000 event creators all over the world.
So, are you ready to start your festival planning?
