Musikfest kicks off tonight in Bethlehem, Pa., with a headlining performance by Riley Green, launching a 10-day celebration of free and ticketed concerts that organizers hope will draw record-breaking crowds to the historic steel town.

In 2024, Musikfest drew 1,020,000 attendees — a decline from 1.3 million in 2023 — yet still outpaced major festivals like the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival (750,000) and Chicago’s Blues Fest (500,000) in overall attendance.

Despite the dip in total attendance, the festival still set a new record for ticket sales for its headliner shows on the Wind Creek Steel Stage, selling 54,786 tickets. The festival also saw four headliner shows completely sold out.  

The festival has played a key role in Bethlehem’s revival, transforming the former steelmaking hub into a rising music destination — trading steel furnace blasts for pedal steel guitars as it now hosts one of North America’s largest free music festivals. 

Since the 1980s, local cultural org ArtsQuests has been leading an effort to transition the town towards music tourism.

“We served the entire country – Bethlehem steel was used to build the Golden Gate Bridge, the Brooklyn Bridge and the Empire State Building,” said Patrick Brogan, chief programming officer and manager of the ArtsQuest Center. But the mill fell on difficult times, parts of the northeast deindustrialized and much of the mill was demolished to make way for a casino.

But not all from the past was lost – the mill’s iconic 250-foot blast furnaces were renamed the Bethlehem Steel Stax and repurposed as the backdrop for the Levitt Pavilion SteelStax amphitheater, the 2,500-seat shed that anchors the ArtsQuest campus. The shed hosts the festival’s paid concerts this summer from acts like The Avett Brothers, Darius Rucker, The Black Crowes, Chicago and The Black Keys. The rest of Musikfest’s 300 concerts are free to the public and spread out at 15 different venues across the city and the ArtsQuest campus, a four-story performing arts center that serves as the central hub for 12 festivals including !sabor! Latin Festival, One Earth Reggae Festival and the Blast Furnace Blues Festival.  

“When you’re working with these 200-foot tall blast furnaces behind you, scale is everything, and ArtsQuest is scaled to be able to produce a higher volume of events than your average performing arts center,” Brogan said, noting that ArtsQuest is the third largest arts organization in the state behind the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia and the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust. In total ArtsQuest hosts 1,100 events a year.    

“The heart of Musikfest comes from the 450 artists coming in from all over the world,” he said, “It’s the free to the public stages all across the city, spilling over the stacks on to the campus.”