Levitation is going to look a lot different this year. After years of populating venues throughout the Red River Cultural District, usually on Halloweekend, the beloved alternative music festival is taking a more centralized approach at Palmer Events Center from September 26-28.
The move to the 75,000-square-foot Palmer, at 900 Barton Springs Road, harkens back to past Austin music festivals. Levitation (then known as Austin Psych Fest, which is now a separate event) took place at Carson Creek Ranch before shifting to a multi-venue format in 2018, while Fun Fun Fun Fest – the brainchild of Resound Presents (and former Transmission Entertainment) founder Graham Williams – rocked Waterloo Park, and then Auditorium Shores, for a decade. Palmer will offer one indoor and one outdoor stage for this year’s event.
“We’ve been searching for the right location to bring a multi-stage experience back to [Levitation] for years, and we found it right Downtown,” co-founder/director Rob Fitzpatrick said in a statement. “The venue offers a huge upgrade in production overall with endless possibilities for the visual experience, and great amenities – air conditioning, nice bathrooms, ample parking, a giant shaded outdoor courtyard, along with the production infrastructure needed for a world-class show.”
The festival kicks off on Friday, September 26 with a metal bent: Mastodon, Blood Incantation, and the Sword are all slated to perform, as well as the recently reunited sludge metal titans Acid Bath.
Skewing indie on Day 2, Saturday’s bill includes TV on the Radio, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, the Brian Jonestown Massacre, Blonde Redhead, Swervedriver, Wednesday, La Femme, Model/Actriz, and more.
Sunday closes with slacker kings Pavement, plus Built to Spill, Destroyer, Frankie and the Witch Fingers, A Place to Bury Strangers, Being Dead, and festival founders the Black Angels.
To keep Levitation’s Downtown spirit, the festival will throw late night shows at venues throughout the Red River Cultural District (plus Montopolis staple Radio/East) starting on Wednesday, Sept. 24 and continuing throughout the weekend. Mdou Moctar, Beach Fossils, Boy Harsher, Sudan Archives, the Dandy Warhols, Pup and Jeff Rosenstock, and Pile are among the acts performing at those satellite shows. As Fitzpatrick said in the press release, “These clubs are the heart and soul of our music scene in Austin and it wouldn’t be LEVITATION without them.”
Find the full lineup for Levitation 2025 below, and see all of the festival’s late-night shows on its website. Single and three-day passes are on sale now.
This article appears in May 23 • 2025.
