Lollapalooza

Lollapalooza began in 1991 as a farewell tour for Perry Farrell's band Jane's Addiction and quickly became something much bigger. What started as a traveling festival that hit more than twenty cities across the U.S. and Canada each summer evolved into a permanent destination event when it settled into Grant Park in downtown Chicago in 2005. The festival is now one of the largest and longest-running music festivals in the United States, drawing fans from around the world for a four-day, multi-genre experience set against the Chicago skyline and the Lake Michigan shoreline.

The lineup spans alternative rock, hip-hop, electronic dance music, punk rock, heavy metal, pop, and more, making Lollapalooza one of the few major festivals that genuinely covers the full spectrum of contemporary music. The festival has a history of mixing legacy headliners with breakout acts, and its early editions helped push alternative music into the mainstream. Spin credited the 1991 inaugural tour with changing "the trajectory of the '90s" and called it "the template for what became the modern American festival." Beyond music, the festival has included visual arts installations, nonprofit organizations, and a family-friendly stage called Kidzapalooza since 2005.

Lollapalooza has also expanded well beyond Chicago. International editions launched in Chile in 2011, Brazil in 2012, Argentina in 2014, Germany in 2015, France in 2017, and India in 2023, though the Chicago flagship at Grant Park remains the original. The festival's location in the heart of downtown Chicago, accessible by public transit, rideshare, and on foot, gives it a distinctly urban feel that sets it apart from remote outdoor festival grounds.