This week marks the beginning of the Sundance Film Festival, one of the film industry’s biggest events of the year. The festival has been held in Park City, Utah for the past 40 years, but beginning in 2027 at least part of the festival will be held in a new location.
After dozens of cities submitted bids to become the new home for Sundance, the festival organizers narrowed the selection down to three leading candidates: Boulder, Colorado, Cincinnati, Ohio, and a combined bid between Park City and Salt Lake City, Utah. Any shift out of Park City will represent a fundamental change to the famous festival, and the three cities on the shortlist can be placed on a spectrum between least to most disruptive.
The most continuity would be achieved with a shift from Park City to a dual-hosted home of Park City and nearby Salt Lake City, Utah. The proponents of the home state bid frame this as a way to maintain much of its current festival infrastructure while offering an improved experience through access to more venues. The two cities are 30 miles apart, and most festival attendees have always arrived in the area through the Salt Lake City airport.
The case for Boulder, Colorado is largely focused on the city’s artistic culture, known to have the third highest concentration of artistic professionals in the U.S. The Boulder option would keep Sundance in the Rocky Mountains, which has been a central element of the festival’s identity.
A move to Cincinnati would bring the biggest change, with a new Midwest home that is 1,600 miles from Park City. However, a grand move to the Midwest could represent a unique opportunity to redefine the festival and benefit from an eager partner in the city of Cincinnati which is trying to define itself as a new hub for the film industry, with recent films including THE BIKERIDERS and BONES AND ALL having been filmed in Cincinnati.
According to Sundance Festival Director Eugene Hernandez, the decision on the festival’s new home will be based on “ethos and equity values, infrastructure, and capabilities to host the festival.” The new city host stands to gain significant economic benefits, with out-of-state attendees to last year’s Sundance festival dropping more than $100 million into the Park City economy. A final decision will be announced in the upcoming Spring, with the first relocated festival taking place in January 2027.