Overview Up & Up is the college music takeover that students have to win. Each semester, student ambassador teams across 100+ campuses go head to head in a 48-hour ticket presale: students put their card down before the date or venue is announced, nobody is charged unless their school wins, and the schools that sell the most get a full show with a headline DJ. Up & Up pays for the artist, production, marketing, insurance and venue, and the winning student team helps produce the night. It is the longest-running college music tour in the country, now in its tenth year, with 43 festivals and 23 different headliners in its first eight years. Monster Energy has been the title partner since the first tour. On site Fall shows run October to early December and spring shows April to May, in campus arenas and ballrooms and in college-town venues from the West Coast and the SEC to the Midwest, the Northeast and Texas. The winning school's own student DJs open for the headliner. Most schools sell 800 or more tickets in the 48-hour presale, and some pass several thousand. Some campuses keep winning: San Jose State nine times, Washington State five, Arizona and CU Boulder four each. Recent winners include Cal Poly, Cal State Fullerton, Oregon, Cincinnati, Miami University in Ohio, San Diego State, Tennessee, Georgia and South Carolina. Audience The crowd is pure Gen Z: 92% are 18 to 24 and about 55% are women. Their top interests are music and live events, nightlife, fashion and beauty, travel, fitness and social media, and fintech. Up & Up's network reaches about 3 million students at 100+ schools, strongest in the SEC, California and the West Coast, the Northeast, the Mid-Atlantic, and Texas and the Southwest. Campus teams recruit through Greek life and spirit groups, and Greek chapters raise money for charity through presale codes. Talent and influencers Headliners have included Alan Walker, Dom Dolla, Loud Luxury, Gryffin, San Holo, Two Friends, Cash Cash, Sidepiece, Odd Mob, Matroda and Disco Lines, and winning schools have chosen from acts like Kaskade, Oliver Heldens, Tchami and Subtronics. OMNOM headlines fall 2026. Behind the shows are more than 1,000 student ambassadors with one to three campus managers per school, a 5,000-member college creator network and 600 DJs. The network also runs a $10K Talent Showdown, a DJ Remix Challenge, a National Pep Rally that has drawn students from more than 200 universities, a Greek Charity Challenge and a Campus Crawl Tour, and ambassadors earn internship credit. Brand presence Up & Up runs 18 live festivals, 100+ bar nights and more than 1,000 campus event tie-ins a year, and brands use it for everything from sampling and awareness to app sign-ups, focus groups and sales. Monster has made it the center of its college strategy for a decade, with exclusive category rights, 100+ events a year and millions of samples. FragranceNet activated 150+ campus influencers for more than 5 million reach, ran 100+ samplings and hosted spa nights at 20 sororities. Alix Earle launched Sip Margs on campus by crashing a University of Florida party, followed by 300+ cultural events in Florida, California and Boston. Gin & Juice by Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre ran 1,200 influencer posts, sampled 5,000 cans and drove 700+ store visits across 13 campuses. Webull, Stella Rosa, Pair of Thieves and Reign have also run campaigns through the network, and brands can build a custom tour in their own name, in EDM, hip hop, country or another genre.