Preparations are underway for the Austin City Limits Music Festival at Zilker Park on Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2026. The 25th anniversary of the festival begins Friday and runs Oct. 2-4 and Oct. 9-11.
Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman
David Ross moved to Austin, and specifically to the Zilker neighborhood, 22 years ago. As a young, single man with no kids, he recalls enjoying the Austin City Limits Festival and the convenience of living in the neighborhood.
He was there for the much-bemoaned “Dust Bowl” festival in 2005 and experienced the Dillo Dirt debacle in 2009 firsthand. Even so, he said he enjoyed the festival through its ups and downs, for the lore, the diversity, and the love of music that connected everyone attending.
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Now a married father of two, Ross lives down the street from the first house he lived in in Austin. He’s still enjoying the Zilker neighborhood’s proximity to the festival, and now, he said, ACL is woven into the “fabric” of his daughters’ lives as well.
The girls, ages 5 and 7, have operated their own lemonade stand for the past few years. The young entrepreneurs capitalize on the foot traffic surrounding ACL — and their efforts are philanthropic, Ross said. Last year, they raised more than $300 to support the families of Camp Mystic flood victims. This year, all the money they raise will be donated to their Girl Scout troop.
“We try to capture the lightning when it’s in the bottle, because we don’t have this foot traffic all year down Kinney Avenue,” Ross said. “They get to see all the people dressed up and all different kinds of stuff, and it’s just kind of fun for them and exposes them to something they’re not normally exposed to.”
The lemonade stand is traditionally open for business during the first weekend of the festival. Weekend two, meanwhile, is reserved for Austin Kiddie Limits. Ross said that last year, he and his wife brought their daughters to listen to singer Olivia Dean’s performance — and she’s been a playlist staple ever since.
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Ross said he appreciates that his girls will grow up with fond memories of ACL, and that despite the natural challenges that come with living so close to the festival, he wouldn’t have it any other way.
“There’s a downside to eating lobster,” Ross said. “Yes, you’re going to make a mess of yourself. I’d rather just slap on that bib and enjoy that lobster and the butter. You know? That’s how we kind of view ACL.”
The Ross family is more forgiving of the heavy traffic and noise than some other Zilker residents, who say they’ve grown tired of the hullabaloo after many years of ACL.
For those who live closest to Zilker Park, festival season can mean blocked roads, scarce parking (even in front of their own homes), bass rattling through the walls and a parade of strangers passing their front doors. And the disruption stretches beyond the six days when bands are actually playing.
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When a neighborhood park becomes festival grounds
The biggest frustration for many residents isn’t about the festival itself. It’s the loss of such an important green space for weeks during the best-weather months of the year.
Travis Holler moved to Zilker about a year and a half ago, in large part because of the neighborhood’s proximity to its namesake park. He and his partner have two golden retrievers, and Holler said they’ve enjoyed spending weekends car-free. They can walk to Barton Springs, the trail or businesses along Barton Springs Road.
That access, Holler said, has been a “tremendous quality-of-life change.”
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It has also made ACL’s footprint, and the other fall closures at Zilker Park, especially noticeable in their daily lives.
The park closes to the public for about two weeks before and after the ACL Festival, first for setup, then for lawn rehabilitation. Soon after, the city begins preparing for the Trail of Lights, closing the park off yet again for the annual holiday event.
Holler said he hopes the city can find a better balance between hosting large events and respecting residents’ everyday access to the park.
“We bring in hundreds of thousands of people who enjoy the park, but the people that actually live in the neighborhood and spend time picking up trash and doing other things lose access to that green space,” Holler said.
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Ginny Catania, who lives on Ethel Street, said she has benefited from ACL over the years. She can hear the music from her home, her daughter now enjoys attending, and she has even rented out her house during the festival.
But she also spent a morning after last year’s festival filling a garbage bag with bottles left behind near her property.
“Having the city pay for local neighborhood cleanup efforts, or small pocket parks in the neighborhood would be awesome,” Catania said.
Catania also takes issue with the disruption to families. Austin ISD designates the Friday of the festival’s second weekend a “student/staff holiday” each year, and although the school schedule is affected, her work responsibilities aren’t. She said she’s forced to arrange — and pay for — care for her son with special needs.
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Getting elsewhere can present its own challenges. With Barton Springs Road affected by festival traffic and closures, trips west toward Rollingwood and Westlake can require significant detours.
“I love living close to Zilker but it is often so crowded that I just don’t go there as much as I would like,” Catania said.
Bad parking, free concerts and the occasional pair of underwear
Ask enough Zilker residents about ACL, though, and the complaints tend to arrive alongside stories they still laugh about.
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Kent Kostka and Hannah Huckaby have lived in Zilker since 2009. Their assessment: ACL has always been “a mixed bag of fun and excitement with a dose of inconvenience and frustration.”
When the wind cooperates, they have listened to Paul McCartney from their second-floor deck. One year, their son was a member of the Austin High School marching band when it performed onstage with Mumford & Sons.
Less glamorously, they have also watched cars line up for blocks at rideshare pickup areas and seen drivers race through neighborhood streets searching for parking. Once, a drunken festivalgoer wandered in through their neighbors’ back patio door around 11 p.m., apparently believing he had arrived at his Airbnb.
Kostka and Huckaby have found cans, bottles, towels, hats, sunscreen and yes, even underwear, in their front yard. Kostka calls the unopened drinks scattered around the neighborhood “free beer.”
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Still, they enjoy the energy ACL brings. What they want, the pair said, is better enforcement against illegal and unsafe parking and more attention to keeping residential streets clean.
Ingrid Spencer has reached a similar conclusion after more than two decades on Jessie Street.
Spencer has lived in Zilker since 2005 and raised her now-19-year-old son there. Her family has attended ACL intermittently, but she said they enjoy festival weekends even when they never walk through the gates.
Depending on which way the wind blows, the soundtrack comes to them.
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“I’ve heard the Rolling Stones from right outside our house,” Spencer said. “So fun.”
Mixed opinions as festival draws near
Some residents want changes. Some think the festival has become too large for the park. Others barely mind the inconvenience at all. Most, it seems, manage to hold several of those opinions at once.
Ross has had more than two decades to watch the festival, and his own relationship with it, change.
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The young man who once walked down the hill to ACL because he lived nearby now watches his daughters sell lemonade to the crowds streaming toward it.
Even as crowds fill the streets and make the neighborhood a little harder to navigate, Ross said, his family embraces the festival.
“You can’t have these things without people making small little sacrifices,” Ross said. “Throw on the bib and enjoy the lobster.”
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