Fall 2026 is four pile-ups and a 25-day hole

There are 55 festivals left on our calendar between now and New Year's Eve. They are not spread across those twenty weeks in anything like an even way.

Four dates carry most of the season. Between them sit gaps long enough to forget festivals exist — including one 25-day stretch in late November and early December with nothing in it at all.

Here's the shape, then the calendar itself.

The four pile-ups

We counted by the days each festival is actually running rather than by which weekend it belongs to, because plenty of them straddle.

Saturday 3 October is the most crowded day of the year — seven festivals running at once. It's a wide, thin day: Desert Hearts Microfest, 808 Festival in Bangkok, Breakaway in Salt Lake City, EDC Korea, two Palm Tree and Pier Play dates, and Wakaan. Seven bills, 164 names between them.

Saturday 19 September is the biggest by people on stage — 351 artists across five festivals, more than double that October Saturday. Lost Lands alone brings 208.

Halloween is the one everybody feels. Six festivals run on both 30 and 31 October — Escape Psycho Circus, Hocus Pocus, BOO Seattle, Freaky Deaky, Freaky Deaky NOLA and BOO Arizona — 303 names, in six cities, on the same two nights.

The last weekend of September is the California one. CRSSD Fall, Portola, Ocean Way and Same Same But Different all run 26–27 September, in four different California cities.

94 artists are booked in two places at once

Once you have every lineup as data, you can ask which festivals are competing for the same people, and the answer is blunt.

29 pairs of festivals in this window run on overlapping dates and share at least one artist. 94 individual artists are booked at two festivals whose dates collide.

The heaviest collisions:

• 16 shared — Lost Lands (18–20 Sep, Thornville) and Nocturnal Wonderland (19–20 Sep, San Bernardino). Ohio and California, two days, sixteen of the same names, including ILLENIUM, Seven Lions and NGHTMRE.
• 14 shared — Portola and CRSSD Fall, both 26–27 September, San Francisco and San Diego.
• 10 shared — Escape Psycho Circus and BOO Seattle, both 30–31 October.
• 7 shared — EDC Orlando (6–8 Nov) and Ultra Mexico (7–8 Nov), including AFROJACK and Hardwell.
• 6 shared — Hocus Pocus and Escape Psycho Circus, both Halloween.
• 5 shared — 808 Festival in Bangkok and EDC Korea in Incheon, 2–4 October.

A few names are caught in more than one collision across the season. ILLENIUM is in the September one and the October one. Mary Droppinz is in the Asia pair and the Halloween pair. KETTAMA is in the California weekend and again at New Year's.

The honest limit, same as always: most of these festivals run two or three days, and we don't hold published day splits for them. An artist billed at two overlapping festivals may be playing Friday at one and Sunday at the other. When promoters post set times — usually two to seven days out — we transcribe them, and only then does an overlap become a provable clash.

The quiet

The gaps are the part a month-by-month chart hides completely.

• 17–26 August — ten days, nothing.
• 23 November – 17 December — 25 days with not a single festival on our calendar. The longest dead stretch of the year.
• 21–27 December — seven more days, right before the New Year's run.

That late-autumn hole is real and it's structural. The fall season ends at Dreamstate SoCal and Ember Shores on 20 November, and nothing picks up again until EDC Thailand on 18 December.

The calendar

Every festival on our calendar from 14 August to 31 December, by the dates it actually runs.

August — 4 festivals

• 14–16 Aug — Bass Canyon, George (97 names)
• 14–16 Aug — Splash House Weekend 2, Palm Springs (38 names)
• 27–30 Aug — Creamfields, Cheshire, UK (245 names)
• 29 Aug — Night Trip Festival Arizona, Scottsdale (13 names)

September — 17 festivals

• 4–5 Sep — Wasteland, San Bernardino (55 names)
• 4–6 Sep — North Coast Music Festival, Bridgeview (144 names)
• 4–7 Sep — ARC Music Festival, Chicago (140 names)
• 7–13 Sep — Dancefestopia, Kansas City (42 names)
• 10–13 Sep — Infrasound Equinox, Clarks Grove (93 names)
• 11–12 Sep — Global Dance Festival, Morrison (32 names)
• 11–12 Sep — Goldrush: Midnight Riders, Chandler (32 names)
• 18–20 Sep — Lost Lands, Thornville (208 names)
• 19 Sep — Pier Play Festival San Francisco, San Francisco (5 names)
• 19–20 Sep — Experts Only Festival, New York (31 names)
• 19–20 Sep — Nocturnal Wonderland, San Bernardino (99 names)
• 19–20 Sep — Ultra Japan, Tokyo, Japan (8 names)
• 24–26 Sep — Nocturnal Valley, French Village (85 names)
• 25–27 Sep — Same Same But Different, Perris (48 names)
• 26–27 Sep — CRSSD Fall, San Diego (46 names)
• 26–27 Sep — Ocean Way Festival, Santa Monica (22 names)
• 26–27 Sep — Portola, San Francisco (66 names)

October — 19 festivals

• 1–3 Oct — Wakaan Music Festival, Ozark (1 names)
• 1–5 Oct — Desert Hearts Microfest, Deloro Valley (29 names)
• 2–3 Oct — 808 Festival, Bangkok, Thailand (11 names)
• 2–3 Oct — Breakaway Music Festival Utah, Salt Lake City (27 names)
• 2–3 Oct — Palm Tree Music Festival Napa, Napa (10 names)
• 3–4 Oct — EDC Korea, Incheon, South Korea (75 names)
• 3–4 Oct — Pier Play Festival Santa Monica, Santa Monica (11 names)
• 9–11 Oct — NiteHarts, San Diego (21 names)
• 10–11 Oct — EDC Colombia, Medellín, Colombia (103 names)
• 10–11 Oct — Head Trip, Indio (14 names)
• 10–11 Oct — Palm Tree Music Festival Montecito, Montecito (9 names)
• 16–17 Oct — III Points, Miami (212 names)
• 22–25 Oct — Hulaween, Live Oak (86 names)
• 30–31 Oct — BOO Arizona, Scottsdale (5 names)
• 30–31 Oct — BOO Seattle, Seattle (48 names)
• 30–31 Oct — Escape Psycho Circus, San Bernardino (98 names)
• 30–31 Oct — Freaky Deaky, Austin (39 names)
• 30–31 Oct — Freaky Deaky NOLA, New Orleans (12 names)
• 30 Oct – 1 Nov — Hocus Pocus, Miami (101 names)

November — 6 festivals

• 6–8 Nov — EDC Orlando, Orlando (115 names)
• 7–8 Nov — Ultra Mexico, Mexico City, Mexico (16 names)
• 13–15 Nov — Seismic Dance Event, Austin, TX (34 names)
• 15 Nov — RENEW, San Diego (3 names)
• 20–21 Nov — Dreamstate SoCal, Long Beach (85 names)
• 20–22 Nov — Ember Shores, Riviera Maya, Mexico (36 names)

December — 9 festivals

• 18–20 Dec — EDC Thailand, Phuket, Thailand (90 names)
• 18–20 Dec — Sunburn Goa, Vagator (lineup TBA)
• 28 Dec – 1 Jan — Beyond The Valley, Barunah Plains, Australia (84 names)
• 30 Dec — Lights All Night, Dallas (40 names)
• 30 Dec — Temper Festival, San Diego (27 names)
• 30–31 Dec — Decadence Arizona, Avondale (15 names)
• 31 Dec – 1 Jan — Countdown NYE, San Bernardino (lineup TBA)
• 31 Dec – 1 Jan — Proper NYE/NYD, San Diego (lineup TBA)
• 31 Dec – 11 Jan — Zamna Tulum, Tulum (lineup TBA)

What this calendar can't tell you

Two things, and they both cut the same way — toward the back of the year looking emptier than it will turn out to be.

Later months are still filling. A festival enters our catalog when its lineup is announced, not when it's scheduled. November held five editions in a snapshot taken on 7 August; EDC Orlando and its 115 names landed days later. Read November and December as a floor, not a count.

Announced isn't the same as booked. Fourteen more editions sit further out on the calendar carrying no lineup at all yet — Coachella's two weekends, EDC Las Vegas 2027, Tomorrowland Winter and the rest. They're real dates with nothing in them to count.

What that means practically: the four pile-ups are solid, because those festivals are close enough that their bills are essentially complete. The 25-day hole in December is the number most likely to shrink between now and then. We'll know by the time it arrives, and so will you — it's the same public calendar either way.

Computed from our own catalog via the public festivals endpoint, as of 10 August 2026. Lineup counts exclude placeholder rows. If you want the working: casey@electricstate.app.