Ultra Music Festival

Ultra Music Festival
Genre	Electronic dance music
Date(s)	Late March
Frequency	Annually
Location(s)	Most recent Bayfront Park, Miami (2001–2005, 2012–18, 2022–) Previous Collins Park, Miami Beach (1999–2000) Bicentennial Park, Miami (2006–11) Virginia Key, Miami (2019) International spin-offs For full list, see here
Years active	25 years
Inaugurated	March 13, 1999 (1999-03-13)
Founders	Russell Faibisch Alex Omes
Most recent	March 22–24, 2024
Next event	March 28–30, 2025
Attendance	165,000 (2024, 3 days total on Ultra Main Stage)
Capacity	60,000 (Ultra Main Stage)
Organised by	Ultra Enterprises Inc.
Website	ultramusicfestival.com

Ultra Music Festival (UMF) is an annual outdoor electronic music festival that takes place in March in Miami, Florida.^[1] The festival was founded in 1999 by Russell Faibisch and Alex Omes.

It was first held on Miami Beach, but besides a tenure at Bicentennial Park, and briefly being held at Virginia Key in 2019, it has primarily been held at Bayfront Park in downtown Miami. It was a two-day festival from 1998 to 2010.^[2][3]

Since 2011, Ultra has taken place across three days (Friday through Sunday) during the month of March.^[4] In 2012, it had a record attendance, of 155,000 people at the Ultra Main Stage.^[5] In 2013, the festival took place across two consecutive weekends to celebrate its 15th anniversary, with a combined attendance of 330,000 people.^[6] In 2014, the festival returned to its original single-weekend format, selling out pre-sale tickets in under five minutes.^[7][8] The city of Miami has estimated that since 2012, Ultra has "generated approximately $995 million of economic impact", with $168 million in 2018 alone.^[9] The festival was suspended in 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic but resumed in 2022.

The festival is held alongside the Winter Music Conference—an event focusing on the electronic music industry (which was acquired by Ultra outright in 2018), and Miami Music Week—a larger program of electronic music concerts and parties held across the region, with both events usually leading into Ultra.^[10]

Although they share names, Ultra Music Festival was not directly tied to Ultra Records, an electronic music record label. In fact, the companies (Ultra Music Festival's formal corporate name was Ultra Enterprises, Inc.) were courtroom adversaries in litigation resulting in a two week jury trial in 2012 in federal court in the Southern District of New York.^[11] The parties disputed whether Ultra Music Festival could use "UMF" outside of Florida and whether Ultra Records had improperly started using the name "Ultra Music" and a confusingly similar logo.^[12] However, the dispute was resolved via an out of court settlement, and the two entities announced a "global alliance" in August 2012, which would allow them to collaborate on marketing and cross-promotion.^[13]

Alongside the flagship event in Miami, Ultra has spawned a larger series of international franchises under the blanket branding Ultra Worldwide, which have included locations such as Croatia, South Africa, South Korea, Singapore, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, and others.^[14][15]