Planning a trip to Hangout Fest in Gulf Shores this year? Here’s some bad news

At a Gulf Shores City Council Meeting last week, Mayor Robert Craft announced the cancellation of next year’s Hangout Music Festival, the three-day event each summer that transforms Alabama’s white sand beaches and generates tens of millions of dollars for the Alabama Gulf Coast.

The announcement comes more than six months after Morgan Wallen took over the festival, curating the “Sand in My Boots” edition as a showcase of Southern musical talent, including rap artists like 2 Chainz and Three 6 Mafia appearing alongside country singers including Riley Green and Hardy, with Wallen closing out the weekend.

Wallen’s takeover — and his presence as a polarizing figure after a video surfaced of him using a racial slur — stirred debate among festival fans, many of whom viewed the 2025 edition as a shift in the festival’s direction. Hangout Fest has long been known for its eclectic identity, mixing genres like EDM, rock and pop.

But it drew positive responses from some fans as well, with 40,000 tickets selling out in 90 minutes — a turnout the festival hadn’t seen in years, according to Grant Brown, the recreation and cultural affairs director for the city of Gulf Shores.

The 10-year franchise between the city and the festival’s producers, AEG Presents, expired after this year’s event. Although the City Council approved a two-year extension, the “really compressed timeline” made it difficult for producers “to start contracting with the type of artists they wanted to bring back for the 2026 festival,” Brown said.

Craft — who, along with AEG Presents, could not be reached for comment — expressed a similar sentiment at this week’s meeting.

“We will refuse to let them go back to the acts we’ve had before, so they couldn’t do it,” Craft said. “So, they cancelled the 2026 event, but they’ve got time now to pursue the type of talent we want on our beaches, to invite the right audience that we want on our beaches.”

At a community meeting in June, Craft went further in contrasting the audiences the festivals attracted, saying that Hangout brought in “young kids with their daddy’s credit cards” who were on “a free leash,” according to a report by AL.com.

Compare that to 2025 when Wallen’s festival drew “an older group that had their own credit card,” Craft said.

“And you could certainly see that they were more disciplined,” he added in the AL.com report. “There were less problems. … Really it was a much better behaving crowd.”

Wallen’s edition likewise drew in “a little more mature of an audience, a little more disposable income, a little more discretionary income,” Brown said. He added there wasn’t any issue with Hangout itself, describing the concerts as safe and well-produced.

In the end, Brown said, the decision to seek a different slate of artists comes down to revenue.

“Sand in My Boots” generated a $70 million economic impact in South Baldwin County, home to Gulf Shores, according to local media reports, while previous Hangout Fest weekends usually bring in about $45 million for the Alabama Gulf Coast.

“Having people come to town and stay overnight and use this as a vacation, as well as a concert is really the big goal,” Brown said, “And the producers nailed it with that event that they brought here in 2025.”

He added that the city will continue to work on a longer-term agreement with the festival. In the meantime, Brown said the cancellation will likely lead to reduced revenues for Gulf Shores and for some local businesses this summer.

Still, he expects high tourism along the Alabama coast, a longtime drive-in destination that has seen an influx of newcomers and visitors in recent years, much like Mississippi and the Florida Panhandle.