The 80/35 music festival, the two-day festival that over the years has attracted musicians to Des Moines ranging from Lizzo to the Flaming Lips to the Avett Brothers, is canceled for 2025, a past organizer told the Business Record.

The organization that put on 80/35, the Des Moines Music Coalition, dissolved in October 2024, saying “while the future of the 80/35 Music Festival is not currently determined, it will no longer be operated by the DMMC.”

Former board member and onetime board president of DMMC Justin Schoen confirmed that the 80/35 event is canceled for this year.

“As far as I know the event will not happen in 2025, but the possibility remains that another operator could step forward and resurrect it in the future,” Schoen wrote in an email.

80/35 launched 17 years ago, in 2008. The name referred to the idea that Interstate 80 and Interstate 35 are the two biggest routes for touring musicians and they often land in Des Moines. During most of its history, the festival was held downtown in the Western Gateway Park. Last year it was held at Water Works Park.

Organizers and advocates over the years have said the festival, which in its heyday attracted more than 30,000 attendees, was a way to attract young professionals to the city. Early on, grant funders stepped up to support the festival.

The Community Foundation of Greater Des Moines was one of 80/35’s early funders, approving an initial grant of $100,000 and coming back a later year with a second grant for $50,000, Kristi Knous, president of the Community Foundation, told the Business Record in 2012.

“We appreciated that it played off downtown’s vibrant location, but the real kicker was that [it] is focused on young professionals,” she said in 2012. “They were able to reach out to a community that we wanted to reach.”

Mickey Davis, former executive director of the DMMC, called the cancellation of 80/35 this year a “blow to the music scene.”

“I think 80/35 was unique in some of its goals, particularly that being a nonprofit, the festival was able to think not only about the financial return of the festival, but also its impact to the local music community and the local cultural community at large,” he said.

Des Moines is left with various smaller festivals, such as the Beaverdale Bluegrass Festival, PorchFest DSM, a music festival held on the front porches of residents in the Union Park neighborhood, and Jazz in July at Hoyt Sherman Place, Davis said.

“Those are all very community-oriented and doing really good work in what they’re trying to achieve,” he said. “But none of them were particularly like 80/35, and I would argue, didn’t have the legacy and maybe the cultural reach as 80/35 did.”

Tobi Parks, the owner and founder of the xBk music venue near Drake, said 80/35 set the stage for other types of festivals to thrive.

“If there was no 80/35, maybe Hinterland wouldn’t have gotten to be as successful as it’s been,” Parks said, referring to the three-day festival in St. Charles, Iowa.

“Some of the early artists that played 80/35 may not have ever been in Des Moines before, maybe not thought that Des Moines was a viable tour stop, and now we’re very regularly getting touring artists to come through the city, and I think a large part of that was, again, through a lot of the work and the foundation that was laid by the music coalition,” she said.