Bay Dreams not returning to Nelson
The crowd at the 2023 Bay Dreams music festival in Nelson. Photo: Evan Barnes.
Bay Dreams will not be returning to Nelson next year - however, it will be replaced with another concert.
The annual music festival began in Tauranga in 2016 and expanded to Nelson in 2019, with the first edition drawing a crowd of 20,000 to Trafalgar Park - many of those from outside of the region.
From 2021, the event moved to Rutherford Park and the Trafalgar Centre.
Festival director Toby Burrows told Nelson Weekly that a new South Island location for the event in 2024 will be announced in the coming weeks.
“It was always our intention to move it around and we felt now was a good time to take it somewhere new,” he says. “Events have cycles and we want to keep Bay Dreams fresh.”
Toby says the festival was “well-received” in Nelson.
“It was a challenge bringing such a large-scale event to a city we didn’t really know, but we worked really closely with stakeholders and the community and put it on the map in Nelson.”
He says the festival could make a return to the Top of the South at some stage, but they will “take each year as it comes”.
“We still have Nelson firmly in our sights for Bay Dreams and other events.”
He says a new concert for Nelson is currently being finalised for next summer and will include international acts, however, it will be targeted at a different audience from Bay Dreams.
Episode 10 - Saving her daughter and building a new life. — The Nelson Pod