Both announcements came Wednesday at Visit Sacramento\u2019s annual State of Tourism, where CEO and President Mike Testa laid out the region\u2019s newest plans for growth.<\/p>\n
GoldenSky will return to Discovery Park in 2027, with a three-year commitment. The festival, produced by Danny Wimmer Presents in partnership with Visit Sacramento, had been on pause since 2024.<\/p>\n
GoldenSky debuted in Sacramento in 2022, and drew headliners such as Luke Bryan, Eric Church and Tim McGraw. The 2024 festival drew 75,000 people, making it the largest of its kind in Northern California, and brought in an estimated $14 million in revenue.<\/p>\n
But organizers canceled the festival in 2025, then again in 2026. An oversaturation of music festivals nationally, a limited roster of country artists and high production costs led organizers to step back at that time. <\/p>\n
GoldenSky is now confirmed for 2027, 2028 and 2029, with next year\u2019s artists to be announced this October. It\u2019ll be held the weekend of Oct. 15, 2027, according to a news release.<\/p>\n
GoldenSky was typically held around the time of Aftershock Festival<\/a>, the West Coast\u2019s largest metal festival, allowing stages to stay up for both. Testa, Mayor Kevin McCarty and city councilmember Caity Maple traveled to Louisville last year to meet with the Danny Wimmer team, who run Bourbon & Beyond<\/a> and Louder Than Life<\/a> on back-to-back weekends there, and explore whether Sacramento could again build something similar.<\/p>\n \u201cGoldenSky\u2019s back,\u201d McCarty said. \u201cOur hard work has paid off.\u201d<\/p>\n In more tourism news, the California International Marathon is set for a major expansion, Testa and McCarty announced. CIM, which has run through Sacramento for more than 40 years, currently has a cap of 10,000 runners, a number that\u2019s no longer keeping up with demand.<\/p>\n A race that once didn\u2019t sell out until July now closes in February, with more than 6,000 athletes on a waiting list each year. Runners have qualified for the Boston Marathon and Olympic trials out of the CIM, and its relatively flat course makes it attractive for first-time marathoners as well.<\/p>\n Testa acknowledged the challenge. \u201cThe idea of actually making CIM bigger, of potentially doubling the capacity, isn\u2019t something that will be easy to do,\u201d he said, before McCarty interrupted.<\/p>\n \u201cExcuse me, excuse me, great news,\u201d McCarty said. \u201cAfter many years, we\u2019ve worked with Union Pacific. They\u2019ve allowed us to extend the marathon by having the train run through the center of the city later in the day. We\u2019ll be able to essentially double the marathon capacity.\u201d<\/p>\n That change will allow CIM to grow from 10,000 runners to as many as 20,000 over the next few years. <\/p>\n The announcements come on the heels of what Visit Sacramento called one of the strongest years in its nearly 100-year history. In 2025, Terra Madre Americas drew 165,000 attendees, Aftershock exceeded previous-year sales and Ironman California sold out as the largest Ironman race in North America.<\/p>\n \u201cThe big reveals and payoffs have come from the paths that we have walked for a long time together, laying the foundation for the even bigger that is sure to come,\u201d Testa said.<\/p>\n Keyla Vasconcellos is a food and travel journalist based in Sacramento. Her work has appeared in Cond\u00e9 Nast Traveler, Food & Wine, Eater, Forbes and beyond.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Abridged version: Visit Sacramento announced Wednesday that the GoldenSky Country Music Festival will return to Discovery Park…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":345862,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[121,123,122],"class_list":["post-345861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sacramento","tag-sacramento","tag-sacramento-headlines","tag-sacramento-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=345861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345861\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/345862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Drone](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/GS24_EndOfNight_MillzFilmz-2-1024x767.jpeg.webp\")
GoldenSky Country Music Festival at Discovery Park in Sacramento in 2023. (Courtesy Danny Wimmer Presents)<\/p>\n![\"Marathon](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/CIM-Race-1024x683.jpg.webp\")
Runners participate in the annual California International Marathon on Dec. 8, 2024 near Hazel Avenue. (William Hale Irwin\/Sipa via AP)<\/p>\n