Devlog · 6 October 2026

The Annual Music Festival

The Music Venue gives your city a night out. The Annual Music Festival gives it a weekend to remember, or to forget, depending on how you run it. It is the biggest site in the game and, once a year, one of the biggest swings in your city's finances.

The grounds

The festival grounds unlock with Connected to the world. The site is 10×10 tiles, with a main stage, a meadow stage, a dance tent, a campsite and parking for 6,000 pass holders. It needs a street along its fence to act as the gate, and you can build only one. For most of the year it is a quiet meadow; the map shows it being built, lying fallow off-season, being set up with scaffolding, packed with a crowd that matches the passes sold (muddy if it rains), and being cleared away afterwards.

Planning an edition

Everything is run from a new Festival app on the Mayor's Computer, which you can also open from the grounds' inspector card. You start by picking a date and a length of one to 3 days. The first edition falls on the first such date at least 30 days away, and it repeats every year after that. The season matters: winter festivals sell far fewer passes, and storms are likelier in autumn and winter.

The act market

Each year brings a fresh pool of acts, from local bands and rising names to established acts, stars and the occasional legend. Bands signed at your Music Venue can join as hometown favourites at a discount. Each festival day has slots on the main stage, the meadow stage and in the dance tent, and you make offers to fill them.

Acts answer within a few days. An offer at or above their asking price is accepted; one close to it gets a counter-offer, which stands for a few days; anything lower is turned down. The asking price rises if the billing is beneath them, if the festival's reputation is poor, if you leave it late, and each time they have already refused you. The biggest names will not come at all until your festival has built up a reputation, and they will only play the slots they think they deserve. A rival festival will also sign away acts you have not made an offer to as the date approaches, so it pays to move early on the names you want.

Every answer now arrives as a letter in your mail, and a counter-offer letter lets you accept straight from the inbox.

Passes and the books

Passes go on sale when you announce the line-up, or automatically a few weeks before the date. Demand comes from two places: local residents, depending on your population, their mood and how much they like the line-up; and visitors from further afield, who come for the big names and need good transport links such as an airport, a railway, a highway or festival shuttles. Price the passes too high and they will not sell.

During the festival each day rolls its own weather. Each act plays well or badly, or fails to turn up. Heat and a thin medical budget lead to medical incidents, and light security leads to crowd trouble. A storm can cancel a day entirely; insurance covers the refunds if you bought it. After the last day the net result goes into the treasury in one payment, and the festival's reputation carries into the following year.

The finances are deliberately demanding. A festival of local acts in a modest city loses money; a strong line-up with a star or two can make a substantial profit. Selling out needs headline acts and a reputation built over several years.

What it does for the city

On festival days the city is happier, shops do more trade, and hotels fill with visitors. There is a price: extra traffic into the grounds' district (shuttles help), some crowd crime if security is light, and noise for the homes nearby. A good edition leaves an afterglow of extra happiness for a couple of weeks afterwards.

One of a kind, now clearly marked

Alongside the festival, the build menu now greys out every one-per-city building once you have one, with the same explanation the game gives if you try to place another. That covers the festival grounds, the walk-in venues and the landmarks. Before, the tool stayed selectable and only failed when you clicked on the map.

The money guide covers the city budget the festival's takings feed into.