Following the second (non-COVID-related) cancellation in five years, Bonnaroo is looking for fan input on the festival’s future. A new survey shared by the festival asks respondents to weigh in on the size, duration, location, and stylistic direction of the iconic Tennessee festival. Organizers canceled this year’s event after one full day of music due to severe rainstorms and have yet to announce 2026 dates.
The list of ten questions addresses large-scale elements of the festival, including shortening the event from four to three days. Respondents are also asked whether they’d be comfortable spending more money if it meant a smaller capacity event. Tickets for this year’s festival started at $350 and topped out at $480 leading up to the event, which has a capacity of around 80,000. Fans can also weigh in on which secondary stage is most important, whether they want bigger headliners and fewer smaller artists or vice versa, how much the Where In The Woods lineup and JamTrak transit service affect their experience, and more.
Some of the most consequential questions involve the festival’s stylistic direction. Bonnaroo launched in 2002 with a dedication to the era’s thriving jam band culture, bringing in headliners Widespread Panic, Phish’s Trey Anastasio, The String Cheese Incident, and the Grateful Dead’s Phil Lesh and Bob Weir. In the intervening nearly two-dozen years, Bonnaroo has grown in scale to attract some of the biggest pop, hip-hop, electronic, and rock acts in the world, developing a wider genre palette that ranges from mainstream Top 40 to indie underground. Organizers asked whether attendees would prefer the festival be more genre-specific and geared toward EDM, rock, or jam, and whether the EDM presence at Bonnaroo is too much, not enough, or just right.
The other major consideration floated in the survey is the location of Bonnaroo. In 2021 and 2024, organizers canceled the festival after severe rainstorms rendered the site, The Farm in Manchester, TN, unusable. In the weeks since this most recent cancellation, the Live Nation-owned festival’s production staff floated the idea of changing Bonnaroo’s location and/or dates.
Check out the full Bonnaroo survey here and make your voice heard. Revisit Live For Live Music‘s on-site coverage of “The Bonnaroo That Almost Was“.