Woodstock 50 festival relocates to Maryland

The original Woodstock 50 poster

It looks as if the beleaguered Woodstock 50 festival has found a new home at last.

Just last week, organisers had a second request to hold the festival in Vernon Downs turned down (opens in new tab), a move that was necessitated after original venue Watkins Glen International pulled their support for the event (opens in new tab) back in June.

Now, with just weeks to go until Woodstock 50 is scheduled to take place on August 16-18, Bloomberg (opens in new tab) have obtained documents which report that plans to hold the festival in New York State have been scrapped, and it’ll now take place at the Merriweather Post Pavilion – an outdoor location in Columbia, Maryland.

The new venue holds 32,000 people, with Bloomberg saying that organisers are currently in conversation with artists and their reps about the new plans.

The documents also note that Woodstock 50 would now serve as a fundraiser for charity, with a portion of proceeds from ticket sales going to non-profit organisations. However, at the time of writing, tickets are still not on sale.

Artists including Robert Plant And The Sensational Space Shifters, Greta Van Fleet, Santana, David Crosby And Friends, The Raconteurs, The Killers, Rival Sons, The Zombies and Gary Clark Jr have been booked to perform at the festival.

Scott Munro
Louder e-commerce editor

Scott has spent more than 30 years in newspapers and magazines as an editor, production editor, sub-editor, designer, writer and reviewer. After initially joining our news desk in the summer of 2014, he moved to the e-commerce team full-time in 2020. He maintains Louder’s buyer’s guides, scouts out the best deals for music fans and reviews headphones, speakers, books and more. He's written more than 11,000 articles across Louder, Classic Rock, Metal Hammer and Prog and has previous written for publications including IGN, the Sunday Mirror, Daily Record and The Herald covering everything from daily news and weekly features, to video games, travel and whisky. Scott grew up listening to rock and prog, cutting his teeth on bands such as Marillion and Magnum before his focus shifted to alternative and post-punk in the late 80s. His favourite bands are Fields Of The Nephilim, The Cure, New Model Army, All About Eve, The Mission, Ned's Atomic Dustbin and Drab Majesty, but he also still has a deep love of Rush.