Pitchfork Music Festival will not be returning to Chicago. On Monday, the brand announced that after 19 years, it will no longer be hosting the beloved music festival due to the rapidly evolving “music festival landscape.”
“This decision was not made lightly,” the brand wrote. “For 19 years, Pitchfork Music Festival has been a celebration of music, art, and community — a space where memories were made, voices were amplified, and the shared love of music brought us all together.”
Pitchfork celebrated how the festival was a “collaborative effort” and became a “vital pillar of the Chicago artists scene.” The outlet thanked the city for hosting it for almost two decades and thanked fans for their “unmatched support.”
“Pitchfork will continue to produce events in 2025 and beyond,” the brand wrote. “We look forward to continuing to create spaces where music, culture, and community intersect in uplifting ways — and we hope to see you there.”
Pitchfork was first hired to help curate a separate Chicago fest, Intonation Festival, in 2005. It wasn’t until 2006 that Pitchfork Media launched its own event, hosting 35,000 people in its first year. Known for its eccentric array of performers, several of the most recent fests were headlined by Big Theifs, Black Pumas, Alanis Morissette, the National, Bon Iver, Ms. Lauryn Hill, Mitski, and Erykah Badu.
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Other performers in the past have included Run the Jewels, the National, Sharon Van Etten, Tame Impala, LCD Soundsystem, Haim, Robyn, Björk, Beck, Vampire Weekend, and Kendrick Lamar.
Fans shared their sadness about the fest’s cancelation on X and in the festival’s Instagram comments. “This was basically the Chicago indie music scene met gala and now we have nothing,” wrote one user. “This is actually so sad this was such a fantastic indie festival. really sad for the chicago music scene,” added another.
