Pitchfork Guide to Summer Festivals

Our annual list of the many, many big shows happening around the world

Memorial Day Weekend, the unofficial start of summer, is now here. And with it arrives the summer festival season, when those of us with the means and the willpower to do so could conceivably spend the warm months jetting around the world, standing in fields, and watching great bands play in front of heaving, sunburned throngs of people.

Along with biggies like this weekend's Sasquatch! Festival in Washington state and Barcelona's Primavera Sound Festival, the season brings a ton of smaller festivals: One-day one-offs, family-friendly street fairs, art-museum noise marathons, island getaways, raves, death-metal massacres, folk-music picnics, experimental concert series, etc. Below, we've compiled a long list of the summer's most notable festivals. The list is long, and it grows every year.

Of course, we'd also love it if you paid special attention to one festival in particular: Our very own Pitchfork Music Festival, which comes to Chicago's Union Park July 15-17.


WHAT: Hillside Festival
WHEN: July 22-24
WHERE: Guelph, Ontario
WHO: Kevin Drew & the Beauties, the Rural Alberta Advantage, Braids, the Dears, Grimes, Etran Finatawa, Callers, Gobble Gobble