The Abridged version:
- Visit Sacramento announced Wednesday that the GoldenSky Country Music Festival will return to Discovery Park in October 2027, with a three-year commitment through 2029.
- The country music festival had been held at Discovery Park from 2022-2024, drawing up to 75,000 fans per year. It was canceled in 2025, then again in 2026.
- The California International Marathon is also set to double its capacity, growing from 10,000 runners to as many as 20,000, after Union Pacific agreed to run trains through the city later in the day.
GoldenSky Country Music Festival is coming back, and the California International Marathon is about to get a lot bigger.
Both announcements came Wednesday at Visit Sacramento’s annual State of Tourism, where CEO and President Mike Testa laid out the region’s newest plans for growth.
GoldenSky will return to Discovery Park in 2027, with a three-year commitment. The festival, produced by Danny Wimmer Presents in partnership with Visit Sacramento, had been on pause since 2024.
GoldenSky debuted in Sacramento in 2022, and drew headliners such as Luke Bryan, Eric Church and Tim McGraw. The 2024 festival drew 75,000 people, making it the largest of its kind in Northern California, and brought in an estimated $14 million in revenue.
But organizers canceled the festival in 2025, then again in 2026. An oversaturation of music festivals nationally, a limited roster of country artists and high production costs led organizers to step back at that time.
GoldenSky is now confirmed for 2027, 2028 and 2029, with next year’s artists to be announced this October. It’ll be held the weekend of Oct. 15, 2027, according to a news release.
GoldenSky was typically held around the time of Aftershock Festival, the West Coast’s largest metal festival, allowing stages to stay up for both. Testa, Mayor Kevin McCarty and city councilmember Caity Maple traveled to Louisville last year to meet with the Danny Wimmer team, who run Bourbon & Beyond and Louder Than Life on back-to-back weekends there, and explore whether Sacramento could again build something similar.
“GoldenSky’s back,” McCarty said. “Our hard work has paid off.”
In more tourism news, the California International Marathon is set for a major expansion, Testa and McCarty announced. CIM, which has run through Sacramento for more than 40 years, currently has a cap of 10,000 runners, a number that’s no longer keeping up with demand.
A race that once didn’t sell out until July now closes in February, with more than 6,000 athletes on a waiting list each year. Runners have qualified for the Boston Marathon and Olympic trials out of the CIM, and its relatively flat course makes it attractive for first-time marathoners as well.
Testa acknowledged the challenge. “The idea of actually making CIM bigger, of potentially doubling the capacity, isn’t something that will be easy to do,” he said, before McCarty interrupted.
“Excuse me, excuse me, great news,” McCarty said. “After many years, we’ve worked with Union Pacific. They’ve allowed us to extend the marathon by having the train run through the center of the city later in the day. We’ll be able to essentially double the marathon capacity.”
That change will allow CIM to grow from 10,000 runners to as many as 20,000 over the next few years.
The announcements come on the heels of what Visit Sacramento called one of the strongest years in its nearly 100-year history. In 2025, Terra Madre Americas drew 165,000 attendees, Aftershock exceeded previous-year sales and Ironman California sold out as the largest Ironman race in North America.
“The big reveals and payoffs have come from the paths that we have walked for a long time together, laying the foundation for the even bigger that is sure to come,” Testa said.
Keyla Vasconcellos is a food and travel journalist based in Sacramento. Her work has appeared in Condé Nast Traveler, Food & Wine, Eater, Forbes and beyond.