Published Aug. 16, 2026at6:00am
If you tried and tried to score tickets to the free Stern Grove Festival this summer without success, join the club. Around 80% of people who wanted tickets were in the same boat.
It’s been more than a year since the annual concert series replaced its unpopular online ticket giveaway with a lottery system. It also has turned out to be, well, unpopular.
The concert meadow, surrounded by redwoods and eucalyptus trees, has a capacity of 12,000. This summer, there was an average of 100,000 entrants to the lottery for each performance, organizers revealed to The Standard. Last year’s Diana Ross concert set the record with almost 170,000 lottery participants; Al Green’s show this Sunday nearly matched that, organizers said. There were 1.1 million total entries this year.
“We understand how disappointing it can be not to receive tickets, and we don’t take that frustration lightly. Stern Grove Festival has become significantly more popular in recent years, and interest now far exceeds what our historic venue can accommodate,” festival spokesperson Molly Fremgen said. “In fact, we’re serving more people than ever before, and our total season attendance has doubled since the pandemic.”