Sacramento’s dream of becoming a “city of festivals” is facing a harsh reality. For the second year in a row, the City of Trees will not see the return of a music festival.
On January 30, the traveling Electronic Dance Music festival, Breakaway, announced on social media that it will not return to Sacramento this year due to “unforeseen circumstances.”
Breakaway announced last year that Sacramento would host their two-day NorCal festival at Cal Expo. Headliners for the Breakaway NorCal festival included Martin Garrix and Tiesto.
Sacramento is struggling to sustain festivals following recent cancellations and postponements of events such as Sol Blume, GoldenSky, and Breakaway, partly due to economic challenges and operational costs.
What actually happened?
In an email response to the cancellation of Breakaway, public relations manager Ashlee Wingate wrote that the festival continues to value the Sacramento community and hopes to explore future opportunities with the city.
“While we were very much looking forward to returning to Sacramento, ultimately, there were a combination of factors that made it challenging to produce the festival successfully this year,” Wingate wrote.
Breakaway took place in October 2025, a week after Sacramento’s largest rock, punk and metal music festival, Aftershock. The festival was scheduled around the time of Sacramento’s country music festival, GoldenSky.
GoldenSky, presented by Danny Wimmer, ultimately had to postpone the 2025 festival to 2026 due to insufficient artist bookings to make it worth attending.
Now that it’s 2026, the festival is slated to return, right?
Not so fast. According to Visit Sacramento’s CEO, Mike Testa, GoldenSky is less likely to return in 2026. He said the festival isn’t completely “dead,” and there are plans to bring it back in the future.
Visit Sacramento was a marketing partner for Breakaway and GoldenSky, which are not festivals that the tourism bureau created.
“We are hoping that [GoldenSky] still does come back to the market,” Testa said. “I think the reality is, and you’ve seen this with some of the festivals in this region, whether it’s Breakaway or Sol Bloom, music festivals are not an easy thing to build and to create longevity.”
Organizers of GoldenSky did not respond to requests for comment at the time of publication.
GoldenSky wasn’t the only festival that didn’t happen in 2025. Sol Blume, the hip-hop and R&B festival, was canceled last year as well.
If you even want to call it that.
Sol Blume postponed its 2024 event due to issues at Discovery Park, where it was scheduled to be held. The organizers posted on Instagram that they’ll return in 2025 and said attendees can request refunds or wait; those who do will automatically receive upgraded tickets.
Fast forward to 2025: the festival didn’t take place, prompting many attendees to ask where the money went. The organizers got sued by the ticketing company Lyte, with which they partnered in 2024.
Why can’t Sacramento retain festivals?
Testa said many factors make sustaining music festivals challenging in Sacramento, including economic conditions, rising costs, and weather impacts.
“We’ve seen costs rise significantly over the last few years, whether that’s fencing or security or groundskeeping or even porta potties,” he said. “All those things factor into a decision on whether or not a festival is a good business venture. So that’s some of the challenges that I think we all need to look at.”
Testa said he believes cities and other areas need to make it easier for events to take place in their regions.
“It’s just not a simple equation of if you build it, they will come. It’s got to pencil,” Testa said. “It’s got to be a good business venture for the promoter.”
In 2024, the City of Sacramento approved 3 tourism-boosting proposals, including one allocating $2 million to Visit Sacramento to attract more festivals to the city.
Although approved, Testa said Visit Sacramento hasn’t spent the money.
“It hasn’t been utilized; the city still has that money because we haven’t found the right opportunity to invest. It is something that we continue to look at,” he said. “We want to find a partner that can guarantee us some longevity with what they would produce and what we would invest in.”
What festivals are still happening?
Despite the cancellation of Sol Blume, GoldenSky and Breakaway, there are still some festivals in the city to look forward to.
The 14th annual Aftershock is still scheduled to take place at Discovery Park for four days in October. The traveling music festival Hola Hola, which celebrates Polynesian, Hawaiian, reggae music, food and culture, will also return this year at Heart Health Park at Cal Expo.
Terra Madre America’s food festival took place last summer and has a 10-year commitment with Visit Sacramento to come every odd year, according to Testa. It will return in 2027.
Not a festival, but Sacramento will also see the launch of the new X Games League taking place over the summer at Cal Expo.
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