Best U.S. Music Festivals Worth Traveling for This Year
- GSS Staff
- May 13
- 4 min read
Major music festivals are no longer just concerts people attend for a few hours before going home. Increasingly, they are becoming full travel weekends built around music, nightlife, food, fashion, and shared experience.
People are flying across the country for these events, coordinating group trips months in advance, booking hotels early, and building entire city itineraries around the festival itself. In places like Las Vegas, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Austin, the atmosphere of the city noticeably shifts during major festival weekends as restaurants, hotels, bars, and public spaces fill with attendees arriving for the experience.
And these trips are not inexpensive anymore. By the time tickets, hotels, flights, transportation, food, and upgraded experiences are added together, festival weekends can easily cost several thousand dollars for travelers arriving from out of town. Most major festivals now focus on multi-day passes rather than single-performance tickets, meaning attendees are usually committing to the entire weekend rather than one headline act.
These are some of the biggest U.S. music festivals travelers are planning around this year.
June 5–7
Held at Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens, Governors Ball has become one of New York City’s biggest summer music weekends. The lineup includes Lorde, Stray Kids, A$AP Rocky, Jennie, Kali Uchis, Baby Keem, Japanese Breakfast, and Dominic Fike.
Unlike camping festivals, Governors Ball blends directly into city life. Many attendees stay in Manhattan, Brooklyn, or Long Island City hotels and move between the festival and the rest of New York throughout the weekend. Rooftop bars, museums, Broadway shows, late-night restaurants, and downtown nightlife often become part of the itinerary.
The crowd skews younger and fashion-forward, but the appeal is broader than just music fans. For many visitors, the festival becomes an excuse to spend a long summer weekend in New York. Single-day tickets are sometimes available, although multi-day passes remain the most common option.
June 11–14
Held on a 700-acre farm in Tennessee, Bonnaroo remains one of the best-known camping festivals in the United States. This year’s lineup includes The Strokes, Skrillex, Noah Kahan, RÜFÜS DU SOL, Kesha, Vince Staples, Teddy Swims, and Turnstile.
Most attendees camp directly on-site for four days using tents, RVs, portable cooking setups, folding chairs, battery packs, and camping equipment designed for extended outdoor stays. That setup creates a very different atmosphere from city-based festivals. People spend long stretches of time together. Temporary neighborhoods form across the campgrounds, especially late at night after the main performances end.
The audience ranges from first-time festival attendees to longtime Bonnaroo regulars returning year after year. Many people view the camping experience itself as part of the reason to attend.
July 30 – August 2
Set inside downtown Chicago’s Grant Park, Lollapalooza combines large music programming with one of the easiest big-city festival layouts in the country. Hotels, public transportation, restaurants, museums, and lakefront attractions all sit close to the festival grounds.
The event traditionally mixes pop, hip-hop, indie rock, electronic music, and emerging artists, drawing a wide range of attendees across age groups. What makes Lollapalooza especially attractive for travelers is how naturally it connects with the rest of Chicago. Festival-goers often split time between concerts, architecture cruises, rooftop dining, cafés, and lakefront walks throughout the weekend.
For many visitors, the festival becomes part music trip and part Chicago vacation.
August 7–9
Held inside Golden Gate Park, Outside Lands combines live music with Bay Area food culture, wine experiences, cocktail lounges, and local restaurant pop-ups. The setting feels noticeably different from many large festivals. Instead of concrete stadium environments, much of the event takes place beneath trees and open park space, often with San Francisco fog rolling through during the afternoon.
The audience includes younger festival attendees but also many travelers looking for a broader lifestyle-focused weekend involving restaurants, wine country, coastal drives, and additional time in Northern California. Many visitors extend the trip beyond the festival itself, pairing Outside Lands with Napa Valley, Sonoma, Sausalito, Carmel, or Highway 1 road trips.
October 2–4 & October 9–11
Held over two weekends in Zilker Park, Austin City Limits blends large-scale music programming with Austin’s restaurant, coffee, bar, and live music culture. The festival tends to attract a broader age range than some highly youth-oriented events, with groups of friends, couples, longtime music fans, and families all attending throughout the two weekends.
Visitors often split their time between the festival and Austin itself — spending mornings at coffee shops, afternoons at the park, evenings at barbecue restaurants or hotel pools, and late nights exploring the city’s live music venues. Compared with some more heavily produced festival environments, ACL feels closely tied to the identity of Austin itself: live music, warm weather, outdoor space, and a city built around going out.
May 15–17 (bookmark for 2027, final dates TBD)
Held at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, EDC (Electric Daisy Carnival) is one of the largest electronic dance music festivals in the world. The event runs overnight across multiple stages with fireworks, carnival rides, large-scale visual production, and DJ sets continuing into sunrise.
The lineup this year includes Martin Garrix, Tiësto, Charlotte de Witte, John Summit, Peggy Gou, Fisher, Chris Lake, and Armin van Buuren. Most attendees stay on the Las Vegas Strip and combine the festival with pool parties, celebrity DJ events, restaurants, casinos, and nightlife throughout the weekend. Shuttle transportation runs nightly between the Strip and the Speedway.
EDC tends to attract travelers in their 20s and 30s, although the international crowd is broad. During festival weekend, Las Vegas noticeably shifts atmosphere — hotel lobbies fill with festival outfits, glitter makeup, hydration packs, and people returning from sunrise sets early in the morning.
Typical costs:
General admission: often starts around $400–$500
VIP passes: frequently exceed $1,000
Strip hotels increase pricing significantly during EDC weekend
