Splendour in the Grass cancels for the second year running

The beloved Byron Bay music festival has postponed its return for 2025, citing a need to ‘recharge,’ with organisers promising to come back ‘even bigger and better’ when the time is right.

Splendour in the Grass 2023 in Byron Bay.

Splendour in the Grass, one of Australia’s largest and most iconic music festivals, has been canceled for the second consecutive year.

Organisers announced on Thursday that the event would not return in 2025, stating that the festival “needs a little more time to recharge.”

In a statement posted to Instagram, Splendour’s team addressed the silence since their initial 2024 hiatus announcement: “Hey gang, sorry it’s been so quiet, but we had a little holiday … finally,” they wrote.

“The rest of the festival team have still been busy cooking up some awesome new things for music lovers in Australia, but Splendour needs a little more time to recharge and we won’t be back this year. Think of it as a breather so we can come back even bigger and better when the time is right.”

The beloved Byron Bay festival’s recent run has been turbulent. After the infamous mud bath of 2022 led to a day-one cancellation, the 2023 festival — which featured a lineup headlined by Lizzo, Flume, and Mumford & Sons — struggled to shift tickets, with sales down 30%.

Crowds watch Benee perform at Splendour in the Grass 2023. Picture: NCA Newswire/Danielle Smith

The 2024 edition of the festival, set to be headlined by pop star Kylie Minogue, was scrapped just six days after tickets went on sale, with “unexpected events” cited as the cause.

Splendour, traditionally held at the North Byron Parklands in New South Wales, has been a fixture of Australia’s music calendar for more than two decades. While organisers alluded to “huge events on the horizon,” the festival’s ongoing pause reflects the broader challengers faced by live music events in a post-pandemic landscape.

Several major music festivals, including Dark Mofo in Tasmania, Harvest Rock in Adelaide, and the regional touring festivals Groovin’ the Moo and Spilt Milk became casualties of declining ticket sales and soaring operational costs in 2004.

Falls Festival paused its 2023 event to “rest, recover, and recalibrate” while FOMO, Stereosonic, Soundwave, Mountain Sounds, Future, and Big Day Out have all shut down in the past decade.

In August, music festival director Peter Noble declared that the 36th iteration of Bluesfest in 2025 would be its final curtain call. However, following a surge in ticket sales sparked by the announcement, Noble revealed to The Australian that plans for a 2026 edition are now on the table.