The SweetWater 420 Fest is moving to its fourth location in five years, finding a new home in 2026 at the Shirley Clarke Franklin Park on the Westside of Atlanta.
The 20-year-old festival, presented by popular SweetWater Brewing Co., headquartered in Atlanta, has been at the more industrial locale of Pullman Yards in Kirkwood for the past two years.
“We wanted to go back to our roots being in an open green space,” said Mike Boudreaux, brand activation manager for Tilray Beverages, parent company of SweetWater since 2020. “It’s nice to have trees and grass at a music festival.”
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
The 2026 event is scheduled for April 17-18, with a lineup announcement coming next month. Last year’s event spanned three days, but organizers felt Sunday attendance wasn’t enough to merit a third day this spring.
Despite multiple venue changes over the years, the festival’s mission has remained consistent: celebrating Earth Day, craft beer and cannabis culture with an array of music acts such as Drive-By Truckers, Snoop Dogg, 311, Widespread Panic, the Avett Brothers and Jason Isbell.
“We always want to be true to who we are,” Boudreaux said.
This will be the first major music festival at the 280-acre space, which opened in 2021 as Westside Reservoir Park in the Grove Park neighborhood and was renamed earlier this year after Franklin, Atlanta‘s mayor from 2002 to 2010.
“This is an opportunity for SweetWater 420 to be unique once again and serve their unique audience,” said Josh Antenucci, managing partner of the festival’s production partner Rival Entertainment, which has hosted festivalsin Candler, Piedmont and Historic Fourth Ward parks.
Current SweetWater management, he said, “is really focused on the future and what this iteration of SweetWater 420 can become over time. This space is a little more convertible and has room for growth” compared to Pullman Yards. There will be more space for sponsors, vendors and festival-related activities focused on environmental causes.
He noted that parts of the park will remain open during the festival while “we use a unique parcel on top of a hill that has an awesome view of downtown” and Mercedes-Benz Stadium. It will feature one large stage and a secondary, acoustic stage.
The park is linked to the Beltline and near the Bankhead MARTA station. Organizers are working out parking options and setting up a rideshare pickup and drop-off location.
The park was once Bellwood Quarry, a 19th-century granite mine that used forced labor. The city of Atlanta purchased the land in 2006 and bored a 5-foot tunnel from the Chattahoochee River to turn it into an emergency reservoir filled with 2.5 billion gallons of water.
For a time, the quarry was a popular filming site used by “The Vampire Diaries,” “The Walking Dead,” “Stranger Things,” “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1” and other TV shows and films.
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
SweetWater 420 Fest over the years has moved all over the city. It began in 2006 in Oakhurst, shifted to Candler Park, then Centennial Olympic Park in 2014, where it became a huge event, drawing more than 30,000 people a year. But when Centennial Olympic Park decided to stop hosting festivals of this scope, SweetWater 420 began hunting for another stable home.
In 2023, it tried a scaled-back version of the festival at its brewery headquarters that drew about 5,000. In 2024, SweetWater moved to the more spacious Pullman Yards in Kirkwood, but ticket sales were so poor organizers were forced to drop some of the big acts and make the event free. This year, it returned to Pullman Yards with a ticketed event that drew just 15,000.
Credit: Robb Cohen for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Credit: Robb Cohen for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Maureen Meulen, co-owner of Pullman Yards, said the breakup was amicable.
“I really like these guys,” Meulen said. “I wish them all the best luck in the world. It just financially was not making sense for both parties.”
Music festivals have faced rising costs worldwide since the pandemic, making it more challenging to make money. Although local festivals like One MusicFest and Shaky Knees continue to thrive, several have gone away in recent years, including Candler Park Music Festival, Music Midtown and Imagine Festival, which focused on electronic dance music.
SweetWater 420 Fest is a promotional tool to some extent for the brand and doesn’t necessarily need to be profitable, Boudreaux acknowledged, so the festival keeps ticket prices relatively low.
“It’s always nice to make some money off these festivals, but it’s never been our goal,” he said. “We want to focus on attendance.”
CORRECTION: This story was updated to correct the dates of the Sweetwater 420 Fest in 2026. It will be held April 17-18.
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