Sing Out Loud headliner Hozier performs during the 2025 event. | Noah Hertz, Jacksonville Today
Published on March 17, 2026 at 2:02 pm
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Organizers of the Sing Out Loud music festival will shrink the event this year but then return in full force — with one big change — in 2027.
Local artist showcases and other events will still bring music to St. Augustine for the 2026 festival, but the marquee event on Francis Field, where touring artists perform to a crowd of thousands, will take a break this year.
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When it comes back in 2027, the annual showcase will be held in May instead of September — early enough to get it away from the peak of hurricane season.
“To hold such a large-scale multiday event on Francis Field in downtown St. Augustine during hurricane season is just becoming too risky,” Dianya Markovits says. “It takes almost two weeks to set up the entire festival and then a week to tear it down, and to have that just go to waste with a major storm is just too risky.”
Markovits is the director of public relations for SJC Cultural Events Inc., the nonprofit organization that puts together Sing Out Loud and runs the the Ponte Vedra Concert Hall and the St. Augustine Amphitheatre.
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She says that while the plan is to move the flashiest part of the Sing Out Loud festival to May in 2027, the local artist showcases will stay in September alongside other musical events like the St. Augustine Songwriters Festival and the St. Augustine Record Fair.
“We’re going into our 10th year, so people are used to knowing that there’s a lot of fun stuff happening in St. Johns County in September,” Markovits says. “We’re hopeful that will still drive people to come into town to visit St. Johns County during that historically slow time of year.”
Sing Out Loud’s impact
The massive weekend of music at Francis Field hasn’t always been a key component of the music festival. Sing Out Loud began 10 years ago, but it wasn’t until 2023 — when headliners The Black Keys and Mumford and Sons came to town — that the organizers set up on the lawn.
Markovits says it has become a big part of the event, bringing many people to town to enjoy the music, but also to spend money at local businesses.
This past year, nearly 90% of the tickets sold for Sing Out Loud’s big show went to people from outside of St. Johns County.
In total, according to numbers from SJC Cultural Events, more than 34,000 people attended Sing Out Loud events throughout September, and 25,000 of those people came to the big event, the Live Wildly Showcase, featuring headliners like Hozier, beabadoobee, Father John Misty and more.
A portion of every ticket sold for the Live Wildly Showcase totaling $130,000 was also split up and distributed back to St. Augustine and St. Johns County for local land conservation efforts.
The group estimates that the total economic impact of the 2025 music festival and its surrounding events was $9 million.
A big way that economic impact goes beyond vendors on Francis Field and hotel room rentals is by turning local bars, cafes and other local haunts into venues for local and touring acts to perform.
One of those spots is Spinster Abbott’s, a bodega, coffee shop and taproom in St. Augustine’s Uptown neighborhood.
Spinster Abbott’s hosts live music throughout the year, but owner Liz Snyder says the energy around Sing Out Loud is special.
“There will be nights when we have three or four or five bands performing,” she says. “That’s definitely different than what we can offer on our own.”
As for the marquee event’s move to May, Snyder says she is optimistic.
“I’m kind of hopeful that we’ll have continued benefits for the September local showcases, and now we’ll have a new event in May that will bring us more foot traffic and more business on an additional weekend that we weren’t benefiting from historically.”
Dates and other details about the September Local Artist Showcase events are expected to come in the next several months. In the meantime, SJC Cultural Events confirms that local venues looking to host artists in September will be able to apply in April, and artists looking to perform will be able to apply in May.
Once open, applications will be available at singoutloudfestival.com.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify how money from the 2025 Sing Out Loud event was donated to local conservation efforts.
