One of the best music festivals in the world has ceased to exist. Pitchfork Music Festival announced today that its flagship Chicago event will not return for 2025, ending a two-decade run that brought some of the greatest artists in the world to Union Park.

“As the music festival landscape continues to evolve rapidly, we have made the difficult decision not to host Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago in 2025,” begins the statement posted to the fest’s social media accounts. The message continues:

This decision was not made lightly. For 19 years, Pitchfork Music Festival has been a celebration of music, art, and community-a space where memories were made, voices were amplified, and the shared love of music brought us all together. The Festival, while aligned with the taste of the Pitchfork editorial team, has always been a collaborative effort, taking on a life of its own as a vital pillar of the Chicago arts scene. We are deeply grateful to the City of Chicago for being our Festival’s home for nearly two decades, to the artists who graced our stages with unforgettable performances, and to the fans who brought unmatched energy year after year. Thank you to At Pluto and the rest of the hardworking Festival team whose dedication and creativity were the backbone of every event, and to the broader community whose spirit and support made the Festival a truly unique experience. And thank you to Mike Reed for founding the Festival and for your inspiring vision.

Pitchfork will continue to produce events in 2025 and beyond. We look forward to continuing to create spaces where music, culture, and community intersect in uplifting ways-and we hope to see you there.

Pitchfork curated the inaugural Intonation Music Festival at Union Park in 2005. The following year, Pitchfork began hosting its own event, the Pitchfork Music Festival, at the same site. It has continued to recur in Union Park every year since, minus 2020 for pandemic reasons.

The festival has been a handy prism for understanding the evolving tastes of Pitchfork’s audience and staff over the years, but changes have been clearly afoot for a while. Early this year, parent company Conde Nast laid off much of the Pitchfork staff and brought the site under the supervision of GQ. A few months later the fest announced Black Pumas as a headliner — a band that is completely incongruous with the Pitchfork brand. That, plus reporting about the company’s plans to ramp up VIP options at the festival, left some of us to wonder what the future of the festival might be. The answer appears to be: no future at all.

For what it’s worth, the site is now led by Mano Sundaresan, who is surely no Black Pumas fan, and the statement indicates the fest is going away due to changes in the festival landscape, not changes at Pitchfork. But whatever the reason for the shutdown may be, this is a huge loss. As a Midwesterner who came of age reading Pitchfork, I’ve attended this event many, many times and have always had a blast. I have so many great memories there and was looking forward to making many more to come. There’s really no equivalent in terms of across-the-board quality of the performers and affordable pricing. Hopefully some new tradition can arise to take this festival’s place, but damn.

Nineteen years of music and memories. Thank you, Chicago. pic.twitter.com/SmNEXHwKiV

— Pitchfork Music Festival Chicago (@pitchforkfest) November 11, 2024