Ultra Music Festival

Where Ultra Music Festival happens.

Where is Ultra Music Festival? At Bayfront Park, 301 Biscayne Boulevard, in downtown Miami, on the edge of Biscayne Bay. The Ultra Music Festival location has changed several times, but Bayfront Park is the one it keeps coming back to: it held Ultra from 2001 to 2005, from 2012 to 2018, and every year since 2022.

When is Ultra Miami? In March, over three days, Friday to Sunday, the format since 2011. In recent years it has taken one of the last two weekends of the month: 25 to 27 March in 2022, 22 to 24 March in 2024, 27 to 29 March in 2026.

The timing is the point. Ultra is held alongside the Winter Music Conference, the electronic music industry's gathering in Miami, and Miami Music Week, the wider program of concerts and parties across the region. Both lead into Ultra, which closes the week. In 2018 Ultra bought the Winter Music Conference outright.

The Ultra Miami location is also a matter of rules. The licence the city of Miami approved in 2019 caps the event site at 55,000 people, a figure that can only rise with the city's approval, and requires at least $2 million a year in payments to the city. In 2022 Billboard reported that Ultra would stay at Bayfront Park through 2027.

How big Ultra is.

How many people go to Ultra Music Festival? About 165,000 across the three days: the figure reported for every edition at Bayfront Park since 2014, and again for 2026, when visitors came from 100 countries. It is not a crowd that is ever in one place. Split evenly, 165,000 over three days is 55,000 a day, the same number as the cap in the city's licence.

The record is 330,000, from 2013, when Ultra celebrated its fifteenth anniversary over two weekends, the only year it has done so. In 2019, its one year on Virginia Key, it reported 170,000.

Growth came in steps, and each step moved the festival. About 10,000 people came to the first one, on the beach in 1999. By 2001, the first year at Bayfront Park, it was 21,000, and by 2006, the first year at Bicentennial Park, 48,000. In 2010 Ultra announced its first sell-out, more than 100,000 people over two days by its own count, and in 2011 it became a three-day festival.

The money is the other measure. The city of Miami has estimated that Ultra generated about $995 million of economic impact from 2012 onward, $168 million of it in 2018 alone. In 2026 Miami-Dade County proclaimed 28 March Ultra Music Festival Day.

A short history, and who owns Ultra.

Who owns Ultra Music Festival? Its co-founder Russell Faibisch, with Adam Russakoff, who joined him in 2005 and has since been executive producer and talent buyer for Ultra and for Ultra Worldwide, the brand its editions abroad run under. Wikipedia gives the festival's formal corporate name as Ultra Enterprises, Inc.

Faibisch and Alex Omes, with a third partner, Ray Navarro, put on the first Ultra in March 1999, and named it after Depeche Mode's 1997 album Ultra. It was a one-day beach party at Collins Park in Miami Beach. About 10,000 people came, and the partners still lost between $10,000 and $20,000 on it. The festival came back to Collins Park in 2000, and in 2001, having outgrown the beach, it moved across the causeway to Bayfront Park.

From 2006 to 2011 it was held at Bicentennial Park. It sold out for the first time there in 2010 and became a three-day festival in 2011. In 2012 construction of the Miami Art Museum on the Bicentennial site sent it back to Bayfront Park, and the same year Ultra began its own live stream. Omes had left the organisation in 2010, and he died in January 2015, aged 43.

The years since have been as much about the city as the music. On the first day of the 2014 festival, 28 March, gate crashers broke down a chain-link fence and trampled a security guard, Erica Mack, who was left in "extremely critical" condition. Miami's mayor, Tomás Regalado, suggested the incident could count as a breach of Ultra's contract with the city. In April the city commissioners voted 4 to 1 to let it stay, on conditions. Ultra hired a retiring Miami Beach police chief, Ray Martinez, to run its security, and from 2015 it admitted no one under 18.

In September 2018 the commissioners voted unanimously against another year at Bayfront Park, citing noise complaints from downtown residents. The 2019 edition moved to Virginia Key, a barrier island, using the Historic Virginia Key Beach Park and the Miami Marine Stadium. On the first night the shuttles back to the mainland broke down, and many people walked the William Powell Bridge on the Rickenbacker Causeway instead, about 2.5 miles. Ultra called the site "simply not good enough", and in July 2019 the commission voted 3 to 2 to bring it back to Bayfront Park.

It was one of the first major American festivals cancelled for the pandemic: 2020 was called off, then 2021. Ultra returned to Bayfront Park in March 2022. Two years later, on the opening night of 2024, a storm shut the whole festival down, the first time weather had stopped all of Ultra; it reopened at 4 p.m. the next day and ran late to make up the time.

Ultra around the world.

Ultra Music Festival Miami is the original, and the name has been exported since 2008, when Ultra Brasil opened in São Paulo. It moved to Rio de Janeiro in 2016. The editions run under the brand Ultra Worldwide, and Wikipedia lists places it has gone including Croatia, South Africa, South Korea, Singapore, Mexico, Brazil and Colombia. The festival's own YouTube channel carries aftermovies from Ultra Korea in 2012 and from Ultra South Africa, Ultra Japan and Ultra Buenos Aires in 2014.

Since 2012 there has also been Road to Ultra, a smaller format: one day and one stage, held in places including Thailand, Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Colombia, and in India, in New Delhi and Mumbai, from 2017. In November 2020 Road to Ultra in Taiwan was Ultra's first large event since the pandemic began.

Ultra also turned one of its Miami stages into a brand of its own. Resistance, its stage for underground house and techno, went on tour in 2017, headlined by Sasha and John Digweed, with a Tuesday residency at Privilege in Ibiza. The closing party of Ultra Europe, on the island of Vis, has been a Resistance party since 2015.

Ultra Europe, in Split.

Ultra Europe is the summer edition, the Ultra festival Croatia has hosted every July since 2013, the two pandemic years aside. It is held in Split, on the Dalmatian coast, and Croatians search for it as Ultra Split more often than as Ultra Europe. Ultra Croatia is another name people look for it under.

The first edition took place on 12 and 13 July 2013 at the Poljud Stadium, with two stages: the Main Stage and the Carl Cox & Friends Arena. A day later came Ultra Beach, a party on the island of Hvar. In 2014 the festival grew to three days, and with Ultra Beach it drew 150,000 people to Split and Hvar.

From 2015 the weekend became a week, sold as Destination Ultra. Ultra Europe splits its days between the city and the islands: three nights of the festival in Split, then a yacht regatta off Bol on Brač, Ultra Beach on Hvar, and a Resistance closing party at Fort George, a fortress on Vis. In the city itself, the Ultra festival Split has hosted since 2013 moved from the Poljud Stadium to the Park Mladeži stadium, the Youth Park, in 2019, and has stayed there. The 2020 and 2021 editions were postponed for the pandemic, and the festival came back in July 2022.

How big is Ultra Europe? In 2023 the festival reported more than 150,000 people from more than 140 countries, across four stages: the Main Stage, Resistance, UMF Radio and Oasis. The 2026 edition, on 10 to 12 July, was its twelfth, and Calvin Harris headlined it for the first time. The Croatian-Canadian entrepreneur Joe Bašić has organised it since its founding, and Croatia's Ministry of Tourism describes it as "strategically important".

Why Ultra got so famous.

Three things made Ultra famous beyond Miami, and the first is that artists use it to show something new. Avicii played the finished version of "Levels" for the first time at Ultra in 2011. In 2014 Eric Prydz premiered his Holo show there, and Diplo and Skrillex debuted Jack Ü the same weekend. In 2019 deadmau5 unveiled his Cube v3 rig on the festival's stage.

The second is the screen. Ultra began its own live stream in 2012, and its YouTube channel's most-watched videos are not sets but aftermovies: the one for 2012 has about 38 million views. By 2026 the #ULTRALIVE stream reached 42.5 million. As with Tomorrowland, the Ultra most people know is the one they watched.

The third is the surprise. In 2012 Madonna walked on to introduce Avicii. In 2013 Swedish House Mafia played the last two shows of their farewell tour at Ultra, and in 2018 they reunited there, closing the festival in their first live appearance as a group since 2013. They came back to close the Saturday in 2026, with back-to-back sets alongside Eric Prydz and Armand Van Helden.

The music

What the music actually is.

Ultra is not a genre festival, though its Main Stage sounds like one. That stage is where EDM's biggest names come back to year after year: Hardwell and Martin Garrix each have their Ultra sets from 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026 on their own channels. The 2026 stages also included the Ultra Worldwide Stage, the Live Stage, the UMF Radio Stage, the Resistance Megastructure and the Resistance Cove.

Away from the Main Stage, three institutions have lasted. Carl Cox has hosted his own arena since 2005, and Miami New Times counts it a fixture of the festival for two decades, missing only 2024. Armin van Buuren has hosted an A State of Trance stage since 2011, the year his radio show reached 500 episodes. And Resistance, the stage for underground house and techno, arrived in 2015, by Wikipedia's account. Ultra has booked bands too: The Killers headlined in 2006, The Cure in 2007, the booking Faibisch has said he is proudest of, and in 2012 Kraftwerk and New Order both played the old Live Stage.

Drum and bass is the part this site cares about most, and at Ultra it was there before the Main Stage was. The bill for the first beach party in 1999 included LTJ Bukem. At the first Bayfront Park edition, in 2001, Andy C played alongside Paul Oakenfold and Paul van Dyk, and Photek was among the names Ultra booked in its first years at the park. The breakbeat of The Prodigy came too: they headlined for the first time in 2006, came back in 2009, and made their last Ultra appearance in 2017.

The clearest case came in 2016. Knife Party, Rob Swire and Gareth McGrillen's side project, took the closing slot of the whole festival and turned it into a Pendulum set, the two members bringing back their drum and bass band at the end of Ultra, with Tom Morello as a guest.

That is the thing worth knowing, for a listener who comes from breaks, jungle or drum and bass. Ultra's reputation is the EDM Main Stage and the reunion under the fireworks, and that reputation is earned. But the festival booked LTJ Bukem before it booked any of that, and it ended its 2016 edition on a drum and bass band.

Hearing Ultra from home.

Ultra streams its stages live as #ULTRALIVE, and the artists put their full sets online afterwards. The most-watched Ultra set found is Skrillex's in 2015, more than 94 million views on his own channel, the set Miami New Times remembers for Diplo and Justin Bieber joining him. Also on that list of the festival's best performances is Hardwell's in 2013, more than 35 million views on his channel, in which he brought out Dyro for their collaboration "Never Say Goodbye". Martin Garrix's 2015 set sits between them on views, with nearly 39 million.

For the festival in a Belgian park that most of the world knows through a screen, read our Tomorrowland guide; for the one at a racetrack in the desert, our EDC Las Vegas guide. Our guide to live DJ sets covers who else films the music. And the Selector plays one full DJ set at random from 62,877, if you would rather not choose.