Gulf Shores, Alabama Mayor Robert Craft said that “We will refuse to let [Hangout Fest/Sand In My Boots Festival] go back to the acts that we’ve had before.”
Hangout Fest has had a peculiar run as of late, what with rebranding to Sand In My Boots Festival and teaming up with country music star Morgan Wallen to curate this past year’s event. Now, it has come to light that the Gulf Shores, Alabama festival will need to take a year off in 2026.
The news broke not via organizers’ official communication channels, but from an errant comment made by Gulf Shores Mayor Robert Craft near the end of a city council meeting. “The Hangout Music Festival will not occur in 2026,” he said, according to Advance Local. “We will not have an event in 2026. We are already approving the event in 2027.”
Unlike numerous other festivals, meager attendance wasn’t responsible for the gathering taking a year off. All 40,000 tickets to Sand In My Boots sold out within hours, a feat never accomplished during its Hangout Fest era. Last year’s event was headlined by Brooks & Dunne, Post Malone, and Wallen himself, with Diplo being the only well-known EDM act on the lineup.
Rather, the 2026 event was nixed due to the festival’s ten-year franchise agreement expiring this year — and its organizers failing to secure a new one in time for talent buyers to effectively do their jobs. “We delayed too long, or they did, in their application to be able to get the kind of acts that we required them to have to be successful in 2026,” Craft said. “We will refuse to let them go back to the acts that we’ve had before. So they couldn’t do it and so they canceled the 2026 event.”
Craft continued: “They’ve got time now to pursue the type of talent we want on our beaches, to invite the right audience that we want on our beaches, that we proved last time, the last event, that could happen. We’re determined if it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen that way again.”
No official dates have been announced for Sand In My Boots Festival 2027 at the time of writing.