Festival Creep Is Real

a.k.a. The rollout of next summer's festival season is happening earlier than ever before. What does that mean for the health of the sector, and the actual experience of attending these events?

Last weekend, I was out shopping with my wife and came across something surprising: the store we were in had already set up a giant, multi-aisle section of Christmas decorations and holiday paraphernalia. The date was October 26, and while I’m well aware that the holiday season long ago escaped from the confines of December, it was still a bit jarring to be confronted with a sprawling array of plastic trees, shiny ornaments and Santa merchandise before Halloween had even hit.

I’m far from the first person to make this sort of observation, and I’m guessing that most of us have heard the old adage about the annual Christmas onslaught arriving earlier and earlier each year. But does that claim have any merit? According to a data-driven article published just yesterday in The Guardian, it does. The phenomenon, known in some circles as “Christmas creep,” has not only been happening for decades, but it appears to extend to everything from radio playlists to the on-sale date for holiday pudding. (As an American, I’ve never actually had a holiday pudding, but The Guardian is a UK paper and I’m going to assume that their findings can be extrapolated to other countries, at least to a certain degree.)

The motivations behind Christmas creep are relatively easy to parse, and largely boil down to companies hoping to get a jump on their competitors. Most holiday purchases are singular (i.e. consumers tend to buy only one tree, one ham, one stocking, etc.), and in that sort of hyper-competitive marketplace, there’s a logic to presenting people with an opportunity to make those purchases as soon as possible, or at least before the business next door puts their inventory on sale. It might be confusing, or even annoying, for consumers to be greeted with a Christmas bonanza months before the actual holiday, but the strategy clearly works, and has touched off a weird arms race where the start date of the holiday season inches forward a little more each year.

What’s even weirder, however, is the fact that festival promoters are now employing the exact same tactic.

Last Thursday, October 24, Barcelona’s Primavera Sound—which has become one of Europe’s biggest and most important festivals—announced the line-up for its 2025 event, which is happening in June, more than seven months from now. This was nearly a month earlier than the announcement for its 2024 edition, which was issued on November 21, 2023.

Festival creep is real.