We planned for nine hundred. One thousand and fifty people came through the gate at Northerly Island on October 11th, which is the largest gathering this organization has ever held and about a hundred and fifty more than the site plan comfortably allowed for.
Four years earlier there were a hundred and eighty people here and one stage we had borrowed the speakers for. It is difficult to describe what it is like to stand on the same patch of grass and not be able to see the back of the crowd.
Four stages, and what we learned running them
This was the first year we programmed four stages simultaneously. Two movement, one talks, one quiet tent. The gamble was that the talks stage would sit empty while everybody chased the movement sessions, and it did not. Dr. Ruth Kellerman spoke at half past twelve on what loneliness does to a body, and people sat down on the grass in front of her for forty minutes on a Saturday afternoon.
The breathwork tent reached capacity in all eight of its blocks, which we did not anticipate and could not accommodate. We turned people away eleven times across the day. Next year that tent doubles in size, and the blocks go from forty minutes to sixty.
The one genuine failure was the water. Three filling stations for a thousand people is not enough, and by two o clock the queue at the northern station was fifteen minutes long. Six stations in 2026, and two of them near the main lawn.
Four years earlier there were a hundred and eighty people here and one stage we had borrowed the speakers for.
The announcement
At a quarter to four, ahead of the closing circle, we told the crowd that Denver was opening the following spring. It had been decided for two months and known by nine people.
The reaction was louder than anything else that happened that day, including the closing circle, and about forty people came to find the team afterwards to ask how they could help. Two of them now teach at City Park.
What the day cost, and who paid for it
Entry was free, as it has been every year and will continue to be. The day cost $41,200 to run. Ticketed workshops brought in $8,400, vendor pitches $6,000, and the remainder came from three partner organizations and a grant from the parks alliance.
We publish this because a free festival is not a free festival, it is a festival somebody else paid for, and the people who turn up deserve to know who.