IBMA World of Bluegrass Festival to leave Raleigh after 2024; city planning new event for 2025
This weekend, Raleigh's largest bluegrass festival will fill the streets with dozens of musicians on multiple stages. But this year's IBMA World of Bluegrass festival will be one of the last in Raleigh, organizers announced Wednesday.
After a decade in Raleigh, the International Bluegrass Music Association announced Wednesday the long-time festival, which includes a week of bluegrass conferences, workshops and a free two-day street fest, will have one last run in the City of Oaks in 2024.
Loren Gold, Visit Raleigh's executive vice president, said the city put forth a "competitive bid," but IBMA still chose to go in a different direction.
"I'm at peace; our organizations are at peace with the decision," he said. "It's a business decision."
Gold explained that two years impacted by COVID-19 and then Hurricane Ian in 2022 didn't help. Still, the annual IBMA World of Bluegrass event has raked in about $88 million dollars for Raleigh over the last 10 years.
In 2025, organizers say they plan to create a new Raleigh music festival with a broader range of music with Carolina roots.
The event will be a coordination between Visit Raleigh, PineCone and the Raleigh Convention Center with the intention to bring a new Americana-style music festival to downtown Raleigh starting in 2025.
The new 2025 festival will be run by PineCone, a Raleigh based non-profit that has produced the downtown bluegrass festival since it arrived in Raleigh in 2013.
David Brower, executive director of PineCone, said change is inevitable.
"The city is changing around us," Brower said. "Change is good. From my prospective, this is really a mission-driven change."
Brower has high hopes for the new event.
“The festival will certainly include bluegrass but will be much more culturally expansive,” said Brower. "We want music that is rooted here, whether it's bluegrass gospel, blues, funk or soul ... we want to make sure this new festival both looks and sounds like Raleigh.”
Gold is also hopeful about a new, broader festival.
"We're known as a music town nationally, and that's not going to change," Gold said. "I want us to be known as a diverse music town, not just a town that's locked into any one genre."
WRAL News asked city leaders if the replacement event could generate a similar economic impact.
"I think that's a tough question," Gold said. "I think within due time, yeah, we can certainly scale it to the heights that we got to."
Kerry Painter, director and general manager of the Raleigh Convention and Performing Arts Complex, is also optimistic.
"There will be more diversity, more extensions," Painter said. "We have no wonderful idea what could come out of this ... that's the excitement and the beauty of being able to completely control where our destiny goes and how does it grow."
It's too early for specific details about the 2025 event, but Raleigh leaders know they need and want to host an event that draws in big crowds.
"What's really exciting is that what we're keeping all the best elements of the festival that the city has grown to know and love," Brower said. "We'll still be loading up the streets with joyful music played from the heart."
IBMA plans to announce a new city for the World of Bluegrass festival by the end of the year. The event will be held in Raleigh for the last time in 2024.
