| Portola Music Festival | |
|---|---|
| Genre | Electronic dance music |
| Dates | End of September |
| Location(s) | Pier 80 (San Francisco, California, U.S.) |
| Years active | 2022–present |
| Organised by | Goldenvoice |
| Website | portolamusicfestival |
The Portola Music Festival, also referred to as Portola, is an annual music festival held at Pier 80 in San Francisco, California. The festival made its debut in 2022. It is presented by Goldenvoice, the same company that promotes Coachella. The event primarily features electronic dance music. Limited to people over the age of 21, it is intended to "present electronic music in an adult way". [1] [2]
The festival is named after the 1909 Portola Festival, an event thrown by the city of San Francisco to demonstrate its recovery from the 1906 earthquake. [3] [4]
The event received noise complaints from residents of the city of Alameda which is located across the San Francisco Bay from Pier 80. [5] The city requested that the festival be discontinued or moved to a different location due to the various noise complaints from its residents. [6] The highest sound level recorded by sound monitors located in Alameda was 61.4 dBA, which is below the city's noise ordinance of 70 dBA. However, the dBA scale, A-weighting, attenuates low frequency audio by as much as 40 decibels, implying the actual noise level at the lowest audio frequencies could have been as high as 101 decibels. [7]
The 2023 festival received 235 noise complaints and the 2024 festival received 224 noise complaints, despite mitigation efforts. [8] [9] The festival on Sunday went until 10:45 pm in 2024, compared with 11:00 pm in 2023.
| Edition | Year | Dates | Headliners | Attendance or sales | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | 2022 | September 24–25 | 30,000 (attendance) | [10] [5] | |
| 2nd | 2023 | September 30–October 1 | — | [11] | |
| 3rd | 2024 | September 28–29 | 42,000 (attendees per day) | [12] [13] | |
| 4th | 2025 | September 20–21 | — | [14] |