Picture Credit score: Hangout Music Fest
There might be no Hangout Music Fest or Sand in My Boots pageant in Gulf Shores, Alabama, in 2026, the town’s mayor confirmed on Monday evening.
Mayor Robert Craft of Gulf Shores, Alabama, introduced towards the tip of a daily metropolis council assembly on Monday night that the Hangout Music Fest, which was renamed Sand in My Boots this yr, won’t happen in 2026. Nonetheless, the town is already approving the occasion for 2027.
Information of the hole yr comes at an uncommon time within the occasion’s life. Since 2010, Hangout Fest has been identified for its eclectic pop-focused lineup, particularly in recent times, drawing in a younger and various crowd. However in late 2024, organizers introduced that the 2025 version can be renamed Sand in My Boots, and curated by nation celebrity Morgan Wallen.
Whereas this was billed as a one-year takeover, Sand in My Boots bought out its 40,000 tickets virtually instantly—a feat Hangout Fest hadn’t pulled off for years. Sand in My Boots, which kicked off in Might, was headlined by Wallen, Publish Malone, and Brooks & Dunn, and was thought-about a powerful success.
Nevertheless it was additionally the final yr coated by a 10-year franchise settlement with the town. Whereas metropolis officers weighed choices on an extension, officers and members of the general public expressed widespread approval for the brand new Sand in My Boots format, which was a lot heavier on nation music than its predecessor.
By the point the council authorized a brand new franchise settlement, it was late July, and too late to make sure the pageant may go off with out a hitch subsequent yr.
“We delayed too lengthy, or they did, of their software to have the ability to get the type of acts that we required them to have to achieve success in 2026,” stated Mayor Craft. “We’ll refuse to allow them to return to the acts that we’ve had earlier than. In order that they couldn’t do it, and they also cancelled the 2026 occasion.”
“They’ve obtained a while now to pursue the kind of expertise we would like on our seashores, to ask the best viewers that we would like on our seashores, that we proved final time, the final occasion, that would occur,” he added. “We’re decided if it’s going to occur, it’s going to occur that approach once more.”
The elephant within the room is that Sand in My Boots was noticeably “whiter and straighter” than the Hangout viewers. Enterprise homeowners and others repeatedly advised metropolis officers that the Sand in My Boots viewers was “extra prosperous and better-behaved.”
That stated, the mayor’s implication that the town would train veto energy over the pageant’s lineup contrasts marginally with the settlement struck with organizers in July. The doc states that the “particular pageant title and style of music” might be chosen by occasion organizers, however is topic to overview.
Nonetheless, the doc additionally requires organizers to make use of the 2025 occasion as a “benchmark” for the kind of occasion they need to supply sooner or later “as a way to appeal to an identical viewers to offer a optimistic reputational and financial influence for the group.” The brand new settlement is a two-year deal, which contrasts with the earlier decade-long deal, with the second yr contingent on how a lot the town approves of the earlier yr.
