Who says nothing in Las Vegas is free? From November 22-24, the largest-ever free music festival in Vegas begins—over 50 bands playing across four stages at the Downtown Las Vegas Events Center, 3rd St., 1st. St., and Main St. stages—anchored by headliners Neon Trees, Russell Dickerson, Alison Wonderland and Seven Lions.
Local art, pop-up shops, food trucks, and even nightly fireworks will jampack the fully walkable, all-ages, three-day festival. Think art programming curated by AREA15 in installations throughout the weekend, including sneak previews of new AREA15 attractions, like Superplastic’s Dopeameme and the John Wick Experience. You’ll be able to browse and buy everything from custom jewelry to alt apparel to skateboard merch at pop-up shops and booths around the grounds. And you can graze the taco trucks, empanada cards, sushi stands and more parked along Casino Center Blvd. Downtown hotels are offering all sorts of special deals to attendees. Even SlotZilla is in on the action with all-you-can-fly deals under mind-bending 3D graphics along the Fremont Street Experience. It’s all capped off by fireworks at 10 p.m. every night on top of the Plaza Hotel & Casino.
The festival is the brainchild of Circa Resort & Casino Derek Stevens, who mobilized virtually everyone in Downtown Las Vegas for the massive street party. We caught up with him as his team was putting the final touches together.
This festival feels like a spontaneous movement—but I look at the lineup and this must have been a heavy lift.
You know, it was a pretty heavy lift to get here and we’re still lifting. We’ve been announcing additional bands, and the lineup has continued to grow, so we’re very, very excited about it. Going back to the initial concept, it was to come up with events for that weekend before Thanksgiving for everyone: our restaurants, our hotels, our bartenders, our retail.
Who’s it for?
When people ask me who the Downtown customer is I say, ‘Look, Las Vegas has 46 million people visit and 24 million are coming Downtown.’ So we’re looking at over half of all the visitation of Las Vegas coming here [annually]. The only thing that trends a little differently is that it’s a little younger.
What was the thinking behind so much entertainment?
What we tried to do with the Neon City Festival is to develop a brand-new thing. And when you say it’s a free festival, we really try to address the cost component. It’s an unprecedented amount of entertainment in a free format. We’ve got all different types of music, from rock ‘n roll to alternative to country to EDM. So we think by putting this together, we’re really able to give something free to tourists to celebrate Downtown. I think that we can bring in 50,000 people a day, so 150,000 people. What various hotels and casinos are offering, you wouldn’t believe. The key thing in the theme is that it really allows us to celebrate Las Vegas at a completely different price point.
Learn more about all of the special offerings and experiences happening at Neon City Festival.