Sharon Osbourne has revealed more about her plans to resurrect Ozzfest. On the new episode of The Osbournes podcast on Wednesday (March 4), Sharon sat down to offer the first concrete details about the return of the heavy metal festival that has been on hiatus since 2018.
“Ozzfest! Coming back!” Sharon said, just days after first lighting the fuse for the news at the 2026 MIDEM conference in Cannes, France, where she announced “yes, absolutely. Yeah, we’re gonna do it.” She told Jack that the plan is to reboot the festival in 2027, launching it with a two-day event at Villa Park, the home grounds of the Aston Villa Football Club in Ozzy Osbourne‘s hometown of Birmingham, U.K.; that sacred ground was also the site of Osbourne’s final show, the all-star Back to the Beginning blowout last July.
“We want to do two days in Aston Villa and then come to America,” Sharon said before making a call-out to all the Ozzfest fans out there to let her know where the festival should visit and who they want to see in its latest incarnation. In keeping with Ozzy’s push to showcase new, up-and-coming talent on Ozzfest, Sharon also said the team behind Ozzfest is looking for those kinds of bands right now, “because that’s what your dad would want.”
Jack seconded that emotion, saying “that’s what Ozzfest was all about. That second stage was the incubator, where so many guys came out of.” Sharon also noted that while next year’s event will likely consist of just two shows at Aston Villa and two in North America, the current plan is to try and take it on the road again in 2028.
“Do it like you used to,” Jack said about the plan to eventually return to touring. “Why not? We did it better than anyone,” Jack said of the original Ozzfest, which ran nearly annually from 1996 through 2018. “It was more fun. When you go to other festivals everybody’s so uptight,” Sharon reminisced. “That was always the thing about our festival. There was never anyone jockeying for position or thought they were better than anyone else. It was summer camp.”
There are no lineups to speak of yet, but Sharon Osbourne said she’d love to see Judas Priest’s Rob Halford there, which makes sense in light of the agony Halford spoke of in missing Ozzy’s grand goodbye due to Priest’s previously booked gig that same weekend. In May of last year, Halford said he had “no idea” the Back to the Beginning show was happening and after getting a call from Sharon about signing on he had to politely decline due to a previously booked gig with the Scorpions in Hanover, Germany celebrating that band’s 60th anniversary.
“I was absolutely gutted [to miss the show],” Halford said of not being able to make the July 5 gig at Villa Park that included solo and Black Sabbath sets from an ailing Osbourne, as well as performances from Guns N’ Roses, Metallica, Slayer, Anthrax, Alice in Chains, Pantera, Lamb of God and many more; Osbourne died at age 76 on July 22, just weeks after his final gig.
Last month, Sharon, 73, told Billboard that she’s been in talks with Live Nation about the Ozzfest return. “It was something Ozzy was very passionate about: giving young talent a stage in front of a lot of people. We really started metal festivals in this country. It was [replicated but] never done with the spirit of what ours was, because ours was a place for new talent. It was like summer camp for kids,” she said.
The hype machine was further stoked on Tuesday (March 3) when the Ozzfest X account posted a graphic reading, “Ozzfest will return … “
