Festival planning, start to finish: how a festival gets planned, and what it is for
By Tully Zeitlin · Published
Festival planning starts with a question most checklists skip. What is the festival for, and what should be true the week after it ends? The rest follows in order: the date and the site, the budget line by line, the permits, the lineup and the hours between the stages, the food, the sponsors, the run of show, the people on the ground, and the measure. This guide walks that order the way we plan one, after more than eleven years running our own venues as a festival every day and thousands of events produced, every format.
What the festival is for
A festival is the biggest day on a place's calendar and the easiest one to plan for its own sake. Decide first what it does for the place. For a property, the economics land on your P&L, not just a marketing line: increased traffic, longer dwell times, higher sales per square foot, stronger tenant retention. For a city, one festival a year puts the town on the map for a weekend, and the question is what keeps it there. For a producer, the festival is the product, and the question is what fans do between the sets. Write the answer down before you pick the date, because every later choice, from the site to the sponsor, is easier to make against it.
Festival planning, step by step
1. The outcome and the audience. Name who the day is for and the number it should move: attendance, food and beverage, tenant sales, and the growth of your own list.
2. The date and the site. Pick the date against what already runs around it, the weather, and the school calendar. Then walk the site: the stage, the power, the shade and the load-in, decided while they are still lines on a plan.
3. The budget, line by line. Write every item on its own line against what it costs to deliver, and keep the lines that pay their own way. Vendors often come free because the venue is their storefront, and sponsors looking to support the events make the big days bigger.
4. Permits and the city. The event permit, the alcohol permit, parking, sound and security start first because they take the longest, and the city's parks and police staff are partners on the day rather than a box to check.
5. The lineup, and the hours between. The headliners sell the day. The hours between the sets are what people remember: side stages, family zones, art and maker areas, the gathering and food-adjacent moments, and the off-peak hours. Often not just one thing at a time, the layered draw.
6. Food and drink, with the businesses already there. Food is programming too. Build the festival with the restaurants and shops rather than around them, instead of bringing in an outside food truck when the restaurant is right there.
7. Sponsors. A festival is a sponsor surface that sells when the sponsor gets a real experience inside it: a named stage, the family zone, the presenting sponsor of the day. How a place builds the package and finds the sponsor is on event sponsorship.
8. The run of show, on paper. A detailed call sheet for every event day, down to where the vendor sets up and when the water gets to the band.
9. The ground game. One line of communication: one calendar, one call sheet, one contact. Your own team on the ground, or experience managers staffed for the day, whichever fits.
10. The measure, and the week after. Report it against the numbers you already run on. At our own venues the measures were traffic and sales: orders and receipts on programmed days against the days without. Then ask the question the ribbon cutting skips. What brings this crowd back next weekend?
The four types of festivals
Most festivals fall into four types, and the formats inside each come from the working catalog we program from. Music festivals, from a single-stage songwriter weekend to a multi-day, headliner-driven bill. Food and drink festivals: wine festivals, craft-beer festivals and Oktoberfests, barbecue cookoffs, food truck festivals. Arts and cultural festivals: book festivals and author events, art walks and maker markets, film festivals, and the cultural-heritage celebrations a community already keeps. Seasonal and holiday festivals: the fall festival, the holiday market, the spring kickoff. A good festival usually borrows from more than one type, which is the layered draw again: the music festival with the maker market and the family zone inside it.
What sells most at festivals
Food and drink, every time. Food-driven events draw the biggest crowds, and they sell food. Plan the site so the food is the center of it rather than the edge: the restaurants' patios and the vendor row inside the flow between the stages, with seating and shade beside them. The second register is the maker market, where people buy something to carry home. Everything else at a festival is the reason people came. Food and drink are what they spend on once they are there.
A festival inside a year-round calendar
A festival is a seasonal tentpole. Every calendar we build stands on one architecture: a weekly rhythm people can count on, monthly anchors that spike traffic, and seasonal tentpoles that put a place on the map, drawn from a working catalog of 150-plus formats across twelve categories, tuned to each property, its tenants, and its seasons. The festival is the tentpole; the weekly rhythm is what the festival's crowd comes back to on an ordinary Thursday. For a property, that calendar is year-round event programming, and the formats for the ordinary weeks are on community event ideas. For a city weighing one annual festival against a calendar, see cities and municipalities. For a producer whose festival is the product, we produce what happens between the stages alongside your production team; see festivals. The five phases are the same at any size, on how event programming works.
Frequently asked questions
How is a festival planned, start to finish?
In this order: decide what the festival is for and who it is for, pick the date and walk the site, write the budget line by line, start the permits, book the lineup and plan the hours between the stages, build the food with the businesses already there, sign the sponsors, write the call sheet, staff the ground, and measure it on the numbers you already run on.
What are the four types of festivals?
Music festivals, food and drink festivals, arts and cultural festivals, and seasonal and holiday festivals. Most good festivals borrow from more than one.
What sells most at festivals?
Food and drink. Food-driven events draw the biggest crowds, and they sell food. The maker market is the second register.
How far ahead should festival planning start?
The permits and the headline act set the clock, and both take the longest, so they start first. Talent and vendors are booked months ahead, and the sponsor conversation starts once the date and the crowd are real.
Do you need a festival production company?
For the stages, the sound, the fencing and the gate, usually yes, and that is the producer's craft. What most festivals under-resource is the layer between the stages: the family zone, the maker area, the sponsor experiences, the off-peak hours. That is the part a production partner inside the footprint carries alongside your production team.
How do you keep the festival crowd after the festival?
Give them a reason to come back on an ordinary week. A festival is a seasonal tentpole; the weekly rhythm is what turns a visit into a habit. The same good night every week, and a reason to come back on the others.
Get in touch.
Tell us about the place. We listen first, propose what fits, and shape the engagement around what you actually need.