Rifflandia Festival permanently cancelled

An end-of-summer staple for Victoria is calling it quits—this time for good, according to its organizers.

For the past 18 years, Rifflandia Festival brought big-name artists and local musicians to the capital city in late August or early September.

“Until a few weeks ago,” a 2026 Rifflandia was still in the cards, according to the festival’s co-founders (and spouses) Nick Blasko and Casey Austin. But its future has become financially untenable, despite a promised $90K funding boost from the BC government this year.

If a 2026 show was held, it was intended to be the last, said the organizers.

“Access to a venue of the right size and scope in downtown Victoria has always been challenging, and this year it finally became unattainable,” said Austin and Blasko in a written statement. “The rising costs of infrastructure, as well as accessing artists at fees that maintain a palatable ticket price? Same.”

For much of its run, Rifflandia was held at Royal Athletic Park before relocating to the Matullia Lands at Rock Bay. In 2022 and 2023, the festival was held over two weeks with a special “Electric Avenue” weekend for electronic music fans.

Austin and Blasko say the festival was always a labour of love, not a money-making venture.

“Rifflandia Festival doesn’t, and has never, sold enough tickets to cover its costs,” they wrote. “It has operated at a loss since the very first edition in 2008.”

Still, the couple says the festival was a “healthy economic driver” for Victoria, creating jobs and boosting tourism. And it produced some memorable experiences for music lovers on the Island.

The inaugural Rifflandia weekend in 2008 attracted some notable artists to town, including Tanya Tagaq and The Walkmen, and local favourites Current Swell and Jon & Roy.

Over the years, the music festival began drawing bigger names and bigger crowds, with headliners Broken Social Scene in 2011, The Flaming Lips in 2012, and Death Cab for Cutie in 2014.

Rifflandia was indefinitely paused in 2019—at the time, organizers hoped it would return in 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic dashed those plans—before returning in 2022. That year brought some of its buzziest headliners to date, with Lorde and Charli XCX—two years before their fraught relationship was explored in the song “Girl, so confusing”—getting top billing.

In recent years, the festival featured lineups with a blend of nostalgic acts and more contemporary ones. In 2024, 1990s favourites TLC headlined alongside rising Canadian rockers The Beaches. In 2023, veteran punk Iggy Pop and superstar DJ Diplo performed on the main stage.

The mixture of decades and genres was something that set Rifflandia apart from other music festivals, Blasko said in 2024.

The Rifflandia Entertainment Company still has its fingers in many pies—it is currently working on projects in Victoria, Toronto, London, and Paris. The company recently launched the Rifflandia Foundation, a nonprofit organization that creates equitable access to sports, live events, and cultural gatherings.

While their days of running the South Island’s biggest music festival are over, Austin and Blasko say they hope the loss of Rifflandia opens up opportunities for a younger generation of organizers to host something new.

“We truly hope that something special will grow in its place,” they said. “We’ll be first in line to buy tickets.”