Overview Bumbershoot is Seattle's Labor Day weekend music and arts festival at Seattle Center, where the concert stages share the grounds with theatrical wrestling, a cat circus, a skate and BMX park, a fashion runway and an underwater mermaid act. The festival calls itself Seattle's moss-covered Mardi Gras. The city first staged it in 1971 as the Mayor's Arts Festival, and it took the name Bumbershoot in 1973. New Rising Sun, a team of concert promoters and visual arts producers, relaunched it with Seattle Center in 2023, and the same producers built Cannonball Arts, a year-round multilevel music and arts space in downtown Seattle. Seattle Center is the 74-acre campus built for the 1962 World's Fair. On site The 2026 festival ran as a set of districts across the campus. BUMBERMANIA staged wrestling as theater, Motley Zoo Animal Rescue put shelter cats and kittens through circus acts, Gravity Park ran skateboard and BMX sessions, and Pacific Northwest designers walked the Fashion Runway. The Recess District held a Puppet Playhouse and a Magic Dome, the Comedy Coop played inside Seattle Children's Theatre, VIDEORAMA screened Northwest short films, and HistoryLink mounted PROTEST!, a visual history of civil disobedience in Seattle. The JUXT stage sat on the Fisher rooftop. Around them were a Euro Bungee trampoline rig, large-scale sculpture and light art, roaming performers, a Merchant Village of more than 20 independent sellers and Flatstock, a concert poster market. Audience Gates are all ages, and the program runs from a Recess District of puppets and magic to a wrestling ring and a comedy room. Much of the bill is local by design: the runway is Pacific Northwest designers, the film program is Northwest shorts, and the festival's stated aim is professional opportunities for the region's artists and training for its next event producers. It runs an accessibility program for visitors with disabilities and subsidizes part of its ticketing. Talent and Influencers Emmylou Harris, Chuck Berry, Etta James, James Brown, Tina Turner, Eurythmics, Baaba Maal, Modest Mouse, Death Cab for Cutie and Sleater-Kinney have all played Bumbershoot. The 2023 relaunch bill carried Sleater-Kinney, Brittany Howard and Band of Horses. Track record The first festival in 1971 ran on a $25,000 budget and drew 125,000 people; by 1973 it had grown to five days and 200,000 visitors. The City of Seattle produced it through 1979, the nonprofit One Reel from 1980 to 2014, and AEG from 2015 to 2019. After a pause it returned in 2023. It trains new producers through BumberWorks, a program that teaches applicants how to run a music festival or produce a concert.