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You may laugh, but I would put Milwaukee on this list. It punches WAY above its weight when it comes to festivals, and has even been called the "City of Festivals". Of course there's Summerfest, once billed as, and certified as, "the World's Largest Music Festival", as well as Pride Fest, Polish Fest, German Fest, Irish Fest, Festa Italiana, Mexican Fiesta, Indian Summer, Bastille Days, Jazz in the Park, Chill on the Hill, Cedarburg Strawberry Festival, Brady Street Festival, Waukesha Janboree, all the church festivals (a legacy of the city's strong ethnic/Catholic heritage), MULTIPLE Oktoberfests, etc. Milwaukee even has a dedicated, permanent 75-acre festival grounds on its lakefront -- the Henry W. Maier Festival Park -- which is buzzing with activity every weekend all summer long and is an absolutely gorgeous facility and location for festivals.
Buffalo is similar, and I suspect many other Great Lakes cities celebrate their summers this way. Summer weather is near-perfect, and people want to be outdoors. Festivals and Lawn Fetes in every corner of the city and surrounding areas, plus some larger (though not nationally know) music festivals and performances throughout the warmer months. Many competing festivals on weekends.
Even during the rest of the year are celebrations like the various Fall and Harvest Festivals in the surrounding areas, Winter has Holiday and Winter Festivals, along with many smaller excuses to hold festivals, like Bloody Mary Fest. Spring brings Maple Weekend and celebrations for St. Patricks Day (2 parades) and Dyngus Day. Early summer festivals begin by May, starting with Elmwood Porch Fest and several country festivals, and summer really kicks off with the large Allentown Art Festival in June along with Juneteenth.
For Montreal festivals, off the top of my head, from largest to smallest. Not including those festivals in the GMA or nearby.
Spring-Fall fests
1. International fireworks festival (3M overall, 300,000 guest per show, worlds largest fireworks competition festival)
2. Jazz-Fest (2-2.4M overall, 100K-200,000 per show, worlds largest jazz fest)
3. Just For Laughs, (2-2.2M overall, worlds largest comedy fest)
4. Montreal Pride Festival (reportedly the largest in North America, 2M people overall)
5. Mural Festival (1.5+ million overall, North America's largest mural fest/one of the world's largest)
6. Nuits d'Afrique (500,000+ people overall, largest African music fest in the Americas)
7. Francos Montreal (~500K+ people, only type of festival like this in the Americas, possibly the world)
8. F1 (338K at the race + 500K+ downtown, one of the largest globally)
9. Carrifesta, Carribean festival (500,000 over a day in downtown Montreal)
10. Montréal Complètement Cirque (400,000+ worlds largest circus festival taking place in downtown Montreal)
11. Shoni Festival (North America's largest Asian street food festival 200K+ attendance)
12.Osheaga (120-135,000 per year, largest indie/pop festival in Canada, $50M economic impact)
13. Piknic Electronik (every weekend from May to October, 130-150K+ a year, expanded to other cities, Montreal based)
14. Pop-Montreal (101K attendance over 800 shows over 5 days in 50+ venues)
15. montreal mondial de la biere (100K+ a year, N.A's largest beer festival and one of the largest globally)
16. Ile-Soniq (85K this year, growing rapidly, largest EDM fest in Canada).
17. Metro-Metro hip hop festival (70K+ and only in its second year!, one of the fastest growing hip-hop fests in the world)
18. Mutek Montreal (free + paid EDM shows all over downtown, 70K per year)
19. Montreal Comic-con, 62K this year
20. Heavy Montreal*(will return in 2023 apparently, but 60K in 2019, North America's largest heavy metal festival (not considered a rock fest).
21. One off, Rammstein show (45,000+ largest N.A show of theirs so far (L.A will beat us though).
22. Lasso Montreal (first ever country music fest here, 30K in their 1st year, will return in 2023)
23. Otakuthon (anime convention, 29K this year)
24. Fuego Fuego (MTL's first ever Reggaetón festival, sold out, will return in 2023)
Pouzza Fest: punk-rock fest, 175 bands over three days (attendance ?)
Winter
1. Montreal en Lumiere (1M+ people overall, world's largest winter fest)
1B. Nuit Blanche (part of MTL en Lumiere, 300-500K in one night, 210+ activities, world's largest sleepless nights fest)
2. Art Souterrain (an art festival that showcases art all over the underground city, ~500K people attending overall)
3. Igloofest (70K+ attending an outdoor edm show, during winter)
Honourable mention: St. Patrick's day festival (250k-700K, depending on the year, so I'll put this here)
That's all from the top of my head, I'm missing a lot lol but I don't want to continue.
On another topic though: I did attend Lollapalooza this year in Chicago, best concert experience I ever had, especially during Metallica.
Austin is competitive with anywhere for Music festivals I think.
Obviously SXSW and ACL are the heavy hitters, but there are a bunch of good niche festivals as well like Levitation, Illfest, JMBLYA, Seismic Dance Event, and "free week" on Red River. There are some nearby (typically camping) festivals like the Luck Reunion, Utopiafest, Floatfest, and Old Settler's festival. Then there are a bunch of free outdoor concert series like Blues on the Green (this gets up to 50k attendance each week) and Rock the Park. The F1 race also has a bunch of music as part of the festivities, as do UT home games ("Longhorn City Limits").
There are definitely some major non-music related festivals as well such as Eeyore's birthday, Pecan Street Festival, the Kite festival, etc.
I don't know if it matches a Chicago but it's certainly very good for a metro population of 2M.
Austin is competitive with anywhere for Music festivals I think.
Obviously SXSW and ACL are the heavy hitters, but there are a bunch of good niche festivals as well like Levitation, Illfest, JMBLYA, Seismic Dance Event, and "free week" on Red River. There are some nearby (typically camping) festivals like the Luck Reunion, Utopiafest, Floatfest, and Old Settler's festival. Then there are a bunch of free outdoor concert series like Blues on the Green (this gets up to 50k attendance each week) and Rock the Park. The F1 race also has a bunch of music as part of the festivities, as do UT home games ("Longhorn City Limits").
There are definitely some major non-music related festivals as well such as Eeyore's birthday, Pecan Street Festival, the Kite festival, etc.
I don't know if it matches a Chicago but it's certainly very good for a metro population of 2M.
what? Stop the cap. Austin is no where near Chicago’s league when it comes to music festivals. And Austin isn’t second or third. And probably isn’t fourth.
Miami - Ultra and the flagship Rolling Loud
Vegas - EDC, Day N Vegas, Life is Beautiful, etc etc etc (Vegas is second only to Chicago in music festivals)
LA - Coachella
SXSW while a great event, doesn’t draw major headliners. I know what you’re going to say “that’s not what SXSW is about blah blah”. Doesn’t matter what it’s about. If we are talking major headliners, SXSW doesn’t help Austin’s case.
And the “I don’t know if it’s a match with Chicago”. Chicago has so many high profile music festivals that it’s hard to keep up with. those that you mentioned aren’t. And if you think those smaller music festivals don’t exist in Chicago, Miami and Vegas, you’d be wrong. It sounds like you only know Austin’s festival scene and are judgin by what you know.
Clarifying, the original reason I didn’t suggest NOLA is because I thought OP was specifically referring to music festivals specifically. Chicago is first whether we are specifying music festivals. Austin isn’t top 5 if we do include general festivals. And might not be top 5 even if we are sticking to music festivals. ACL isn’t as big as people in Austin seem to think. It’s a huge event but there are bigger festivals out there.
Clarifying, the original reason I didn’t suggest NOLA is because I thought OP was specifically referring to music festivals specifically. Chicago is first whether we are specifying music festivals. Austin isn’t top 5 if we do include general festivals. And might not be top 5 even if we are sticking to music festivals. ACL isn’t as big as people in Austin seem to think. It’s a huge event but there are bigger festivals out there.
I did mention Festivals + events, encompasses all, not only music.
But I’ve never been to Montreal, and reading this thread makes me want to.
Sounds like a great city for fests.
Montreal is a great city, but just for festivals. I definitely recommend a visit
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