VIVA PHX roars back with six days of music, art and food

Assemble your crew (fun to be around, lots of stamina, no drama). Check the weather (not too bad, highs in the 80s/low 90s). Decide on footwear (stylish but also comfortable). Pick your itinerary (the hardest part – there’s so much to choose from).

If the 2024 edition of VIVA PHX, the locally produced celebration of music, art and culture, was a shot of adrenaline for the city, the 2026 festival aims to be a charge-to-300, Energizer Bunny of an event that electrifies the downtown area and beyond.

From 2024’s one-day event, VIVA PHX has grown into a six-day marathon spanning April 15 to 20. The frenetic tone of the festival’s website echoes the event itself: Dozens of concerts, most of them free, at such downtown venues as Club Contact, Valley Bar and Crescent Ballroom. You’ll discover poetry readings, panel discussions, culinary events. You’ll slip into opening night and closing night parties. Oh, and you’ll find ASUPROX, Arizona State University’s flagship music industry conference, which changed its dates to coincide with the festival. Get ready.

Looking back, looking forward

A bit of exposition is in order. The original VIVA PHX ran from 2014 to 2017 as single-day events that crammed scores of bands, tens of thousands of fans and a whole lot of local color into downtown Phoenix. (Back then, Phoenix New Times was a co-presenter of the event.)

Then, it went away. In 2018, Charlie Levy of Stateside Presents told New Times why he paused VIVA PHX: It was tough to get enough high-quality acts, sponsorship dollars dipped, and he wanted to focus on the Van Buren, his new venue.

For years, the event lived only in the memories of sceneheads. In 2024, Best Life Presents and Live Nation brought it back as a ticketed event that revived the spirit of the original festival and drew massive crowds to downtown Phoenix.

“In the process of planning and executing (the 2024 event), we realized there was this desire to have something more expansive in downtown,” says Matt Baquet, the co-founder of Best Life Presents. “And with all the growth and the amazing venues and the creatives and activity in downtown, it seemed like it was a lot to cram into one day.

“What we saw was a desire for something more like South by Southwest that was all-encompassing and really put Phoenix as a whole on display — the capacity that the city and the downtown district has to host, and also the talent that is blossoming here in Arizona.”

The result, this year, is a cultural banquet that a single person can’t possibly see all of. So we’re here to help guide you through what promises to be one of the richest — and in many cases, cheapest — bonanzas of Phoenix’s year.

Choose your own adventure

VIVA kicked off April 15 with an opening-night party at the new home of There Space, the screen-printing shop/DIY venue that closed in 2025. The event included a group art exhibition and sets by a long list of DJs.

A local DJ named Elusiva is on the lineup for the There Space show and an April 18 Ascetic House takeover show at Walter Studios.

“I’ve always sort of had an impression of VIVA PHX being a big ‘hometown heroes’ type of festival,” she says. “So booking really cool headlining acts out of our scene and really including local talent, I think, has been the most exciting thing.”

The day after the kickoff party, VIVA PHX expands across downtown and beyond.

“We are trying to hold onto the VIVA brand and legacy as far as having the weekend be ‘come downtown and choose your own adventure’ vibes,” Baquet says. “On the Friday and Saturday in particular, we’re activating the venues — lots of different genres, lots of different cool things you can stumble into.”

A couple of the ticketed events — Interpol at The Van Buren on April 17, Meat Puppets at Crescent Ballroom on April 18 and “COMEAL: An immersive art and food experience” with Chef Antonio Padilla — are sold out. Don’t worry. You still have dozens of options, such as:

• Crossfade Lab: An event series by CALA Alliance that presents intimate conversations around art, identity and social justice with some of the most thought-provoking Latinx and Latin American artists of our time (April 16, free)
• “Medicine to Muse: Cannabis, Creativity, & the Culture”: A panel discussion hosted by VIVA PHX sponsor Trulieve at Thunderbird Lounge (April 17, free)
• Langhorne Slim + Laney Jones and the Spirits + Jason Woodbury & the Night Bird Singing Quintet at Crescent Ballroom (April 17, free)
• Outdoor, all-ages concert featuring Chuwi, Los Ésplifs, fearofmakingout, Trip Hazard at Civic Space Park (April 18, free)
• Oblique Axis Saturday — Destruction Unit & Friends: Ascetic House’s takeover of Walter Studios featuring live music and DJs (April 18, free)
• “Surviving AI”: Comedian Shane Mauss and author/professor Athena Aktipis’s variety show exploring our AI-infused present through comedy, conversation and live art at Valley Bar (April 19, free)
• Garrison Jones & Friends performing improvised, atmospheric electronic jazz inside the Dorrance Dome at Arizona Science Center (April 19, ticketed event)
• The VIVA PHX wrap party with Chef TJ Culp at Sidewinder (April 20, free to attend, food and drinks for purchase) 

RSVPs are encouraged for the free events, but entry is first-come, first-served.

By Phoenix, for Phoenix

It’s fair to say that Phoenix’s culture scene flies under the radar compared to other U.S. cities, sometimes even in the eyes of its own citizens. 

VIVA PHX aims to change that.

“Phoenix is not recognized as the cultural institution that it is — or at the very least, that there is culture here,” says Steven Totten, director of marketing for Visit Phoenix, a major sponsor of the festival. The city, he says, has presented itself successfully as a boomtown for starting businesses and innovating. But people expect more of the city.

“People come here,” he continues, “because they want to have a nice lifestyle experience. They want culture. They want good food. They want to see art. They want to hear good music. And it just hasn’t been on the top of people’s minds here for a while, but that doesn’t mean it’s not here. There’s an abundance of it. So VIVA is just one way of trying to get the community and the world at large to see what kind of culture is happening in Phoenix.”

Elusiva sees the festival as a way for artists to evolve as they perform.

“As someone who’s part of the fabric of the scene, I feel like Phoenix still struggles to have the cultural capital of other major cities like L.A. or New York, and part of it is that our state doesn’t fund the arts as much as those states,” she says. “So it’s important to have these avenues for local artists to participate. The programming can not only open up people’s minds to what they can do with their art, but give them more opportunities.”

For Baquet, this week comes down to community.

“Our main mission with VIVA is to bring people together,” he says. “That’s part of the reason we made it free. We want as little barrier to entry as possible, especially at this time in the world when things are so chaotic and polarizing. We want to create an environment where people can come engage with one another and have a good time and spread good vibes across the city.

“We believe there’s a strong vibrancy and culture in Phoenix and events like this can really put it on display. That’s what led us to our tagline: Culture happens when we’re together.”