The Stern Grove Festival lineup is out, and the big news is that the great Diana Ross is coming for Big Picnic Weekend in August.
The new Stern Grove Festival ticket lottery is going to be quite the thing this summer, after a particularly good lineup has dropped for the annual free concert series in Stern Grove.
Diana Ross will coming to SF to headline the festival's end-of-season Big Picnic fundraising weekend, on Sunday August 17. The day before, August 16, will feature Damian Marley and Stephen Marley, two of the late Bob Marley's 11 children who have followed in his musical footsteps.
But also on the lineup are The California Honeydrops, opening the series on June 15, Channel Tres on June 22, Sleater-Kinney on Pride weekend, June 29, Orville Peck on July 27, and the Pointer Sisters on August 10.
As discussed last week, the ticketing system has changed for 2025, and there will be a combination of a lottery system, and a last-minute get-in-line option at a network of "community box offices" to be announced.
Organizers explained that they can't go back to the free-for-all, come-and-campout-when-you-want situation of yesteryear, both for insurance reasons and because "the caliber of artists that we are now working with require 'closed to the public' soundchecks, which occur the morning of the show."
The Stern Grove Festival had switched to a ticketing system for the first time during the pandemic, in order to control the crowd size, however they now say they will be sticking with this, as they have fenced in the grove and capacity remains limited.
Those with means can still purchase VIP tables or by reserved seats at group picnic tables. But the free tickets this year will be doled out by lottery, with the lottery for each concert date opening six weeks prior. The window for entry in the lottery will last two weeks, and you'll find out via email if you have won tickets three weeks before the show date.
After that, a limited number of physical tickets will be given out at "community box office" locations the day before each show.
The first lottery for the June 15 opening concert will open Sunday, May 4 at 10 am, and close on May 18 at 10 am. Find the lottery link here when it goes live.
VIP lounge passes ($300) and community table seats ($500) for the Diana Ross concert are on sale now.
Top image: Diana Ross performs onstage at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures 2nd Annual Gala presented by Rolex at Academy Museum of Motion Pictures on October 15, 2022 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Academy Museum of Motion Pictures)
