The popular International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) World of Bluegrass annual conference and music festival has announced it is moving to Chattanooga, Tennessee, after a decade in downtown Raleigh thanks to a $25 million incentive from The Volunteer State after this fall.

But that doesn’t mean the Oak City is going to stop hosting a bluegrass festival. Instead, Pinecone announced last fall it would partner with the City of Raleigh to introduce the Raleigh Wide Open Bluegrass Festival, which will debut in downtown Raleigh on Oct. 3-4, 2025.

PineCone, the Raleigh music organization that has coordinated much of the free music at IBMA’s event, plans to resurrect the branding of a previous street festival with the help of the City of Raleigh, the Greater Raleigh Convention & Visitors Bureau and the State Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

The new name is a tribute to a 2005 Raleigh festival that was launched to bring life to downtown at the time, PineCone says.

The goal, organizers say, is that festivalgoers won’t feel like Raleigh Wide Open is a completely new festival. The plan includes a mix of performances along Fayetteville Street and other downtown areas, with sights on keeping it a primarily free event. The festival will focus on bluegrass but will also include genres like Americana, alt-country and other folk music, especially those with North Carolina ties.

For more information, visit https://pinecone.org/