Essence Festival Needs to Get Professional

Aaliyah, the subject of a tribute at this year’s Essence Festival, by Marc Baptiste

On the eve of the 2026 Essence Festival, a press conference with the CEO inadvertently revealed the need for a new producer.

At a press conference Thursday, Kirk McDonald said, "It's really driven by creativity and curation more than anything else.” McDonald is the CEO of the Essence Festival’s parent company, Sundial Media & Technology Group. “We continue to try our best to get all that done much earlier. The creative process, I’ve been reminded, can’t be rushed. But as a CEO, I’d much rather it all be done back in February.”

McDonald was referencing the festival lineup, which once again underwent late changes. Last year, that meant adding Ms. Lauryn Hill at the last minute. Hill’s appearance made news because the show ran so late that she went on around 2:30 a.m., but lost in the headlines was that she was added too late to positively affect the box office. The festival added payroll without adding draw, and it appears to have done the same this year.

In a poor economy and a rough travel environment, Essence added TI with an orchestra and a tribute to Aaliyah to Sunday night on June 22, two weeks before the festival opens. That’s not enough time for either addition to cause any but the most hardcore fans to travel to New Orleans for the show. They’ll sell some tickets, but they won’t likely sell enough to pay for themselves. Right now the night—and all three nights—look like the Caesars Superdome be maybe half-full at best.

The festival also moved Patti LaBelle and Babyface from Sunday to Saturday night, perhaps to create one classically Essence Festival night with Brandy & Monica headlining a night of ‘80s and ’90s R&B. That lineup looks most like previous years of Essence, but the switch upset fans who bought Sunday tickets to see them. According to Keith Spera at Nola.com, “The festival has tried to accommodate fans upset by the move … in part by offering discounted multi-night tickets.”

It’s encouraging to read in Spera’s story that many of the decisions are made for aesthetic reasons, but since festivals are businesses, at some point people need to think like business people. Spera reports that the Aaliyah tribute took a while to come together as different parties including her family came to terms with the idea. Instead of throwing it on the lineup as a late addition, it might have been a concept better held for 2027, when it could have been a centerpiece of one night’s booking and extensively promoted.

Taken as a whole, Spera’s reporting from McDonald’s press conference makes Essence sound like its production team doesn’t know what it’s doing. For a destination festival like Essence, visitors from out of town need to clear the time in their schedules and book flights and hotels. That’s hard to do at the last minute, so the later the change, the more likely it is that the festival is adding expenses and work without bringing in any additional money.

When I last wrote about Essence’s issues, I observed that the list of performers on each night was not available on the festival website. Now it is, but without any set times. I’d been told that the producers have used the essencefest Instagram feed to disseminate basic information, but at 2:20 p.m. on Friday afternoon, there are still no times for Friday or any other night. And, social media may not be where people get information, but websites exist as basic repositories for key information like lineups. The comments on the Instagram feed also suggest that even though fans love Essence, they’re tired of how half-assed its information flow is. A post that calls itself “Your Guide to Festival Access” is met by access question after access question that their guide didn’t answer.

I’m concerned because Essence’s contract with the city, the Superdome, and the Convention Center conclude this year. Essence wants to make a deal that would see the city pay Essence $10 to $12 million to keep the festival in New Orleans. Another incompetent or semi-competent year in the Superdome will make it harder for the city to make a deal like that, and it would be a shame if New Orleans lost Essence Festival. The city has historically been one of the centers of Black life in America, and it would be sad if one of the remaining signifiers of that was lost because the festival couldn’t get its shit together.

As I wrote earlier, many of the issues are out of Essence’s control. The changing costs of touring and changes in the live music marketplace create obstacles that challenge all festival bookers. But the current leadership at Essence has made a number of moves that suggest it needs an experienced producer who can help make the festival more businesslike. I’ve already said that it needs to move to the Smoothie King Center, where all three nights this year would be sold out or approaching sold out. The move would take some selling and rebranding, positioning the Essence night shows as a more exclusive experience than they once were, but three nights in the Smoothie King Center with more vibe and energy would go a long way toward rehabbing the event.

But even if Essence Festival doesn’t move, it needs a producer to save it from itself.