NBNL Festival, formerly known as North By North Loop, won’t return this weekend after all.
Organizers announced on Thursday morning that the one-day musical event scheduled for Sunday has been canceled, but they did not provide a reason. The Suburbs, Bad Bad Hats, and five other local bands were set to play on two stages outside of Graze Provisions + Libations.
"There were a few contributing factors that made us come to the realization that it was best to cancel for 2024, planning on a return in 2025," event organizer Maureen McDowall told Downtown Voices in an email. "Obviously, one of the factors was that ticket sales were lower than what we were expecting; and we have been conjecturing that being at the tail end of a summer that exploded with music festivals, NBNL and the Twin Cities just hit the saturation point."
By our count, five dedicated music festivals have taken place this summer in downtown Minneapolis alone, and many of them most of them are new or newly revived. That includes Basilica Block Party, which made a comeback after a two-year hiatus in early August rather than its usual Fourth of July weekend, which was claimed by Taste of Minnesota in Basilica Block Party's absence. The other festivals taken into account are Inbound BrewCo's 12th annual Nershfest, Pryes Brewing Co.'s inaugural Pryes Summer, and Butcher & the Boar's two-part Backyard Bash.
North By North Loop took place for the first time last September on Third Avenue North near Monte Carlo. About 800 tickets were sold last year at $40 each, according to McDowall.
The event was renamed to NBNL Festival following a cease and desist from South By Southwest, a long-running annual festival in Austin, Texas, and moved to a new location. Three free performances featuring emerging local artists were planned at Graze leading up to this year's event. The final show in the series, featuring Ava Levy, will go on as planned Thursday from 7-9 p.m. despite NBNL Festival's cancellation.
Stay tuned for the potential return of NBNL Festival in 2025.
