It’s an all-hands-on-deck operation at the Cherry Blossom Festival in Brookhaven.
This weekend, the city will transform for its annual two-day music festival. From 10 am to 6 pm on March 28 and 29, an estimated 60,000 people will flock to Blackburn Park for a lineup including The Head and the Heart, Natasha Bedingfield and Soul Asylum.
It’s the premiere event for Brookhaven. And it’s totally free to attend.
That’s not to say the festival is free to put on. In fact, the affair costs well over $500,000. The city sets aside around $450,000 for its artist budget, and another $250,000 in Special Service District funds was allocated in the budget to help fund the 2026 festival. Sponsors help pay for the rest.
The rest of the money comes from sponsors. Brookhaven recoups a decent chunk of the money, but it doesn’t necessarily make a financial profit. In 2024, the former mayor, John Ernst, said it wasn’t “self-sustaining” yet, but it aimed to be.
After all, it’s literally written into the city policy. Brookhaven Mayor John Park inherited the festival when he took office in 2024. He said he knows people are watching to see if Brookhaven will keep up its commitment – or abandon the festival “for one reason or another.”
He assured that the city is entirely committed to hosting its signature music and arts festival. “We basically said, ‘Hey, we’re going to have one major festival a year, and invest all of our resources into it,” Park said. “It’s a part of our policy.”
Almost all of the city employees work on the festival in some capacity, from parks staff working the venue, Blackburn Park, to the city clerk who helps run the VIP tables. The work extends far beyond the events department.
“We made this a priority,” Park said. “It’s something that we wanted to make permanent, make it an institution, make it sustainable.”
Even if the festival lacks ticket sale revenue, the payoff comes through in other ways. On some level, it helped put Brookhaven on the map – the festival began only three years after the city’s founding in 2012.
Now it’s a part of Brookhaven’s brand. Park said he likes to see Instagram posts and TikToks about the city’s offerings. They always end on the major music festival.
“It really has contributed to the reputation that we have of being a livable, well-run city,” Park said.
It has also paid off with the festival itself. Brookhaven works with Live Nation to book artists, ranging from smaller acts to headliners like Boyz II Men, who performed last year. As the profile of the festival has grown, the city has been able to secure bigger bands and performers.
“Every year, we look at a sponsorship, then we can kind of incrementally increase and moderate our budget for the bands,” Park said.
In the early festival days, Park said there was a “lot of negotiation” to get artists. Bands would hesitate at the idea of doing a free concert in a so-called “random city.” Now, Park said agents will email the city asking to play the festival.
And it shows in the lineup. This year’s festival will feature Hunter Callahan, Shawn Mullins and Angie Aparo, Penelope Road, Soul Asylum, The Head and The Heart, Sara Hells, Nicotine Dolls, Avery Anna, Natasha Bedingfield and Max McNown. The full schedule can be found online.
Offstage, there are food vendors and a robust artists market. Park said the “diversity of offerings” has gotten better over time. But perhaps the biggest change is the way people approach the Cherry Blossom Festival.
Back when Park was just another attendee, he noticed people didn’t start arriving at the park until around 3 p.m. He said most people used to see it as a chance to see a single artist for free — now it’s a whole experience. People arrive earlier and stay throughout the entire lineup. Eventually, the city even had to push its schedule half an hour earlier.
Every year, Brookhaven tweaks the festival to “optimize the joy.” That means expanding the shuttle service into full-sized buses, changing the schedule, and even bolstering the non-musical offerings. Park even hopes the growing profile will encourage bands to offer “friends-and-family” discounts so the city could afford to book them.
The one thing the Cherry Blossom Festival won’t do? Get bigger. The mayor said the estimated 30,000 daily attendees are the festival’s sweet spot. Even at the current size, he warned, driving to the park is heavily discouraged – most guests should ride share, take transit or walk from a distance. Any bigger, and the festival (and transportation) could be unmanageable.
“I’ve noticed it kind of self-regulates at a certain point,” Park said. “I feel like it’s pretty much already reached maximum capacity.”
As the official host, Park said he’s excited to host attendees and “neighbor” cities to the warm-weather festival among the blooming cherry blossom trees. Most of all, he’s excited to show off Brookhaven’s biggest city event.
“(The festival) has just become a part of our identity,” Park said. “And it’s just been so fun to represent that identity.”
