Attention folks hoping that Summerfest‘s delay in announcing its 2025 dates may indicate a return to the festival’s old 11-day format: sorry!
On Wednesday, the producer of Summerfest, Milwaukee World Festival, Inc. (MWF), announced the dates for the 2025 Big Gig. And yep, they’re sticking with the so-called “three-weekend” format. Those dates are:
• Thursday – Saturday, June 19-21
• Thursday – Saturday, June 26-28
• Thursday – Saturday, July 3-5
The announcement was nestled into a larger press release about Summerfest partnering with Northcott Neighborhood House, the host of Milwaukee’s Juneteenth celebration. “For the first time in the history of the festival,” the press release reads, “this partnership will bring Juneteenth programming to Summerfest on the evening of June 19, 2025.”
Last month, Summerfest announced that 555,925 fans attended the 2024 Big Gig—68,482 fewer fans than 2023. The festival placed much of the blame on the weather, citing “the most rain since Summerfest 2000.”
In 2022, Summerfest drew 445,611 fans. In 2021—a late-summer installment and the first year of the nine-day, three-weekend format—409,386 folks showed up. Summerfest 2020 was canceled due to COVID. Summerfest 2019 drew 718,144 attendees. At the time, the 2019 attendance was Summerfest’s lowest in more than 30 years. In general, attendance has declined since the early 2000s, when attendance topped 1 million.
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