It was fun while it lasted.
After three years trying to establish itself as the city’s signature music event, the Evolution Festival will take a year off in 2026. If and when it returns, it could take an entirely new shape.
Although attendance was lower this year than organizers hoped, founder and Executive Producer Steve Shankman said he’s taking a pause because he doesn’t want to compete for corporate sponsorships next year with other events — particularly ones celebrating the nation’s 250th birthday on the grounds of the Gateway Arch.
“We did a lot less people than we thought [we would]. But money wasn’t the issue,” Shankman said. “Instead of everybody hitting up Anheuser-Busch and Worldwide Technology, we feel the right thing to do is to step aside.”
He also cited soccer’s World Cup, which will include several matches in Kansas City and possibly see a team train in St. Louis, and the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles as events that will be seeking many of the same sponsorship dollars.
The Evolution Festival drew 17,000 people across the two days of its September 2025 event. In its inaugural year it drew 25,000 ticketholders, according to organizers. The festival donated $100,000 this year to the United Way of St. Louis’ fund for tornado survivors.
Festival producers turned the event into a nonprofit organization ahead of this year's iteration. Headlining performers included Lenny Kravitz and Sublime.
During its upcoming year off, Shankman said he and the festival’s board of directors will explore possible changes, including holding the Evolution Festival at a different venue or spreading it across multiple locations in the model of the popular South X Southwest festivals.
“It’s all up for grabs, and we have more than a year to plan for it,” Shankman said. “What I really want to do with Evolution is make an evolution of the city. So that may entail doing things downtown, doing things north, south, accentuating the great neighborhoods we have, accentuating the great architecture we have.”
The Evolution Festival was the first music gathering at Forest Park of its scale since organizers canceled LouFest in 2018, after eight years as one of St. Louis’ showcase events.
