L.A.B. performs at the 2024 Homegrown festival. Photo: RNZ/ Pretoria Gordon
The Homegrown music festival is leaving Wellington after 18 years on the city's waterfront.
This year's iteration, set for March, would be the last held in the capital, festival director Andrew Tuck said.
The festival has run on the Wellington Waterfront since its inception in 2008.
"For a myriad of personal and logistical reasons Homegrown is moving cities after this year," Tuck said in a statement.
"The support from WellingtonNZ and Wellington City Council has been massive over the years so we're keen to knock this last one out of the park as a heartfelt thank you to Wellington."
The 2025 festival would also host Wellington band Shihad's last-ever gig, Tuck said.
Speaking to Morning Report on Monday, Tuck said there were a couple of different locations that Homegrown could move to.
"We're not quite sure yet.
"We've got a couple of cities in mind, we've looked at a couple of locations, as I say, that we want to add to the festival, so that there's more there for the attendees to experience.
"There's lots of things in New Zealand, lots of genres that are coming through now that we want to highlight. So we're just looking at a few different locations, and we're hoping to be able to announce that by about the middle to the end of April, be able to put that out and go, that's where we're going for 2026."
Tuck said there was not enough space in Wellington for Homegrown to be able to "grow and evolve".
"We started out in Wellington in 2008 with 10,000 people in three stages. It's now grown to 25,000 people across five stages, and there's more we want to keep adding to the festival as it grows and evolves, and unfortunately we just don't have the space and the capacity on the waterfront or in Wellington to continue to do that for the festival."
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