Boise’s Treefort Music Fest was ‘monumental.’ The crowd one day? Size of Eagle
Pedaling slowly along Capitol Boulevard, Eric Gilbert was struck with awe.
It was Saturday of Treefort Music Fest, the acclaimed Boise festival he co-founded nearly a decade and a half ago. Weaving his cruiser bike through a sea of humanity, it dawned on him that it wasn’t just Julia Davis Park teeming with fans, who were drawn to the Main Stage.
Blocks away, Boise was crawling, too.
“I remember just feeling like my early days of going to festivals and big shows,” says Gilbert, Treefort’s talent buyer. “It just felt like a big show ... like the whole city was there. That was a cool thing.”
Held March 25-29, this year’s Treefort attracted its largest attendance yet, setting new high-water marks organizationally. Showcasing more than 500 bands and performers from across the planet, it grew by roughly 10% in both attendance and revenue, Gilbert said.
Better-known acts included headliners such as Father John Misty, Geese and Flipturn. But the majority of musicians at Treefort, as always, were not household names.
Five-day wristbands sold out in advance for the first time in Treefort history. And an average of 22,000 to 25,000-plus people stampeded the grounds daily, according to estimates that include festivalgoers, performers and more than 1,000 volunteers, staff and crew.
On Saturday of the event, nearly 30,000 attendees visited Julia Davis Park, according to calculations that account, at least in part, for repeat customers, Gilbert said. “It was actually a little higher ... that went through security to track how many people went through.”
That includes festivalgoers who purchased tickets and those who went to free events at the park.
To put that number in perspective? The city of Eagle had a population of 30,346 during the most recent U.S. Census (2020).
That attendance assessment doesn’t even necessarily reflect all of the smaller Treefort venues spread across downtown Boise. Those did not utilize gate scanners. Organizers assume that most festivalgoers also visited the park at some point, Gilbert explained.
Either way? It felt busy. And special.
“Treefort 2026 definitely felt like a monumental moment for the fest,” co-founder and CMO Megan Stoll said in a press release, “from reaching goals to hitting records.”
It wasn’t just the crowds. It was the operational efficiency. The smooth-running infrastructure at Julia Davis Park. The smiling, friendly volunteers. The fact that additional portable toilets didn’t need to be hauled in mid-festival — like last year.
Still, the raw numbers alone are mind-blowing. Ultimately, the press release says, it added up to an estimate of nearly 100,000 visits festivalwide. More than 920 official events took place across 56 venues.
Whether it was Alefort, Yogafort or Comedyfort, peripheral Treefort programming “stretched across 13 Forts,” according to the release, adding that “over 5,500 attendees visited the very first Treefort Market at Boise Centre: a curated maker’s market open to the public brought to you by the creators of Boise’s Wintry Market.”
Jumping on the Treefort bandwagon, other unofficial events happened, too, at other Boise spots.
Translation? After relocating its Main Stage to Julia Davis Park three years ago, Treefort hit its stride in year four.
Can future adjustments still be made? Were the food truck lines sometimes brutal? Sure. But that can be discussed. And resolved.
“I feel like last year we really kind of grew into it, and this year it really felt like we settled in and people embraced the move to the park,” Gilbert said. “I think we’ve learned how to really activate it in a great way. We continue to evolve it.”
For its 15th edition, Treefort will take place March 31-April 4, 2027.
The key will be not to let it grow any larger. Well, maybe. After all, concert-industry trade publication Pollstar recently nominated Treefort for global Music Festival of the Year — in a category limited to attendance of under 30,000 per day.
“We gotta be careful,” Gilbert quipped. “We have to make sure we still qualify for our weight class.”