Big Ears
Thank You, Big Ears Family
With the spirit of the Festival weekend still resonating, we want to express our deepest thanks to everyone who made Big Ears 2026 so extraordinary — the artists, our incredible staff, the operations and production teams, the volunteers, supporters, donors, sponsors, collaborators, partners, cheerleaders, and co-conspirators. What you helped create this weekend was nothing short of magical.
We’ve heard from so many of you since the festival closed, and the messages have moved us deeply. The word we keep hearing is love — love for the music, love for this community, love for this city, and love for what it means to gather together in a moment when the world so badly needs it. More than one person told us that this Big Ears felt different. Special in a way that’s hard to articulate but impossible to miss.
We think we know why. From the youngest artists on our stages to the most seasoned, the message this weekend felt singular and clear — that art is resistance, that showing up for one another matters, and that the simple act of sharing music and creativity in a room full of strangers is one of the most quietly radical things we can do.
That is what Big Ears has always been, and what this community makes it every single year. Until then… Keep practicing. Keep exploring. Keep showing up for each other. The world needs you. The world wants your contribution.
With love and gratitude,
The Big Ears Team
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About Big ears
Big Ears collaborates with artists, audiences, and communities to create joyful, meaningful, and transcendent cultural experiences that defy boundaries, fuel curiosity, ignite the spirit, and nourish the soul.
About UsWHAT THEY’RE SAYING
Our PressBig Ears showcases the wondrously broad creativity currently at play in global-American-international music that’s not designed to be commercial, but which is nevertheless quietly infiltrating popular culture.
Unlike most big-deal music festivals, where you can map out your concert schedule with high confidence that you’ll savor every second, the sprawl of Big Ears’ lineup invites you to stop pre-Googling bands and just surrender.
Big Ears is not just a music festival. It is a beautiful roadside stop on a spiritual journey.
Big Ears touches the sublime.
If you love adventurous music, if you love finding new music you have never heard before and being completely blown away by it, if you can get to Knoxville for the Big Ears Festival, do it.
Big Ears…could well be the most exciting, exhaustive jazz festival that doesn’t call itself that.
America’s and perhaps the world’s most diverse, eclectic, and explorative festival comprising music, poetry, literature, film, and art.
Contained within a walkable radius of historic downtown Knoxville…[Big Ears] creates its own atmospheric climate, along with a center of gravity.
Instead of sales metrics or star power, Big Ears contemplates the perceptual properties of music …
At the silo-destroying Big Ears Festival, music liberated from the confines of category and overt commercialism.
The Big Ears Festival, which unfolds each spring in Knoxville, Tennessee, might be the most open-minded music gathering in the country.
There’s no other festival quite like Big Ears.
One of the most quietly earth-shattering, subtly luminous festivals the world over.
It’s no exaggeration to describe the Big Ears Festival as one of the most unique and eclectic musical gatherings one may ever be fortunate enough to encounter.
