Regina Folk Festival done permanently due to financial struggles

Jeffery Tram · CBC News

· Posted: Mar 11, 2025 3:19 PM EDT | Last Updated: 11 minutes ago

The Regina Folk Festival (RFF) is permanently shutting down aft decades of bringing music to the city's downtown.

Despite efforts to restructure and rebuild, festival organizers announced Tuesday that fiscal constraints and operational challenges person forced them to cancel the lawsuit and dissolve the organization.

"This quality is difficult, however, we are filled with gratitude for everyone progressive with the festival," the RFF committee of directors said successful a statement.

In June 2023, organizers warned the festival was facing a "serious fiscal crisis" and appealed to the assemblage for donations and support. The festival past announced a hiatus successful 2024 to rework its format, citing ongoing fiscal struggles. 

"We are taking a fallow year; a twelvemonth distant from summertime festival programming to rebuild our resources and imaginativeness successful a world that's inactive successful flux for presenting arts organizations crossed Canada aft the economical challenges resulting from the pandemic," the festival said successful a quality merchandise connected March 6, 2024.

Instead of a full-scale lawsuit successful 2024, organizers launched a performance bid portion readying for the festival's instrumentality successful 2025. The 53rd variation was scheduled to tally from Aug. 8 to Aug. 10.

The connection Tuesday said that by aboriginal this year, the enactment realized the fiscal and staffing challenges were excessively large to overcome. The festival has present begun the process of refunding each purchased tickets.

The RFF's closure is the latest stroke to Canada's unrecorded euphony industry, which has struggled to retrieve successful the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Rising costs, stagnant backing and declining summons income person enactment further unit connected organizers. The RFF committee says it present costs 30 to 40 per cent much than it did successful 2019 to signifier a comparable event.

"According to the Canadian Live Music Association, the manufacture experienced a staggering 60% gross diminution during the pandemic," the connection said.

End of an era

Since its founding successful 1969, the Regina Folk Festival has been a fixture of the city's summertime euphony scene, attracting audiences to Victoria Park for a play of unrecorded euphony and entertainment.

"For 55 years, the Regina Folk Festival has been much than conscionable a solemnisation of unrecorded music; it's been a highly anticipated play of assemblage gathering wherever lasting memories were made," the committee said. "We are heartbroken that it is clip to accidental goodbye."