Sound on Sound (Soundside) Festival: What Happened, and What to Do Instead
For a couple of years, Sound on Sound was the biggest music festival Connecticut had seen in a generation — a two-day, two-stage event on the Long Island Sound waterfront at Bridgeport's Seaside Park. If you're searching for it now, here's the short version: it was renamed Soundside, its most recent scheduled edition was cancelled, and there is no confirmed date for 2026. Below is the full story, and where to point your festival energy in the meantime.
What Sound on Sound was
The festival launched in September 2022 with a genuinely marquee lineup — Stevie Nicks, Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds, The Lumineers, and Brandi Carlile among more than twenty acts across two stages, with no overlapping sets so you could realistically see everyone. The 2023 edition kept the bar high with names like the Red Hot Chili Peppers and John Mayer. Produced by a major national festival promoter and held right on the water at Seaside Park, it quickly became Fairfield County's flagship live-music weekend.
The rename — and the cancellation
In 2024 the event rebranded as Soundside Music Festival. The following edition, scheduled for fall 2025 with a stacked lineup, was then cancelled — organizers cited "circumstances beyond our control" and issued refunds. As of this writing in mid-2026, no new edition has been announced, and the festival's future is uncertain. If you bought tickets to the cancelled show, refunds were handled through the original ticketing provider.
For the record, this isn't the first time a big Bridgeport waterfront festival has wound down: Gathering of the Vibes, the jam-scene institution that ran at the same Seaside Park, held its final edition back in 2015.
Big shows are still coming to CT
Festival or not, the touring acts keep coming. Track every major concert across Connecticut — arenas, amphitheaters, and clubs — in the free CT Concert Center app.
Download on theApp StoreWhere to go instead
The good news for Bridgeport: the waterfront still has a thriving live-music anchor. The Hartford HealthCare Amphitheater, on the harbor just minutes from Seaside Park, runs a full season of national touring acts from late spring through fall — it's the most direct replacement for a big Bridgeport concert night. You can find more in our guide to concert venues in Bridgeport.
For the festival experience specifically, Connecticut still has a deep roster of genre festivals — jazz in Hartford, bluegrass in Goshen, folk in New Haven, and more. We round them all up, with months and locations, in our Connecticut music festivals guide. And for the free, all-summer-long side of things, see our CT summer concert series guide.
We'll update this page if Soundside returns. In the meantime, the surest way to catch the big acts is to watch the calendar — the CT Concert Center app tracks upcoming concerts across more than 40 Connecticut venues.