OKEECHOBEE – Okeechobee Music Festival will take 2024 as a fallow year, according to festival organizers. They plan to bring it back stronger, better, and reminiscent of the earliest days of the treasured Okeechobee, Florida festival - meaning a return to the multi-genre musical lineup that made OMF distinctive when it burst onto the festival scene in 2016 and quickly rose to acclaim.

While there won’t be a festival in 2024, OMF will still be active in the community. Soundslinger considers the Okeechobee community an essential and important component of a successful OMF. OMF donates $2 of every ticket sold to select local Okeechobee nonprofits. To date, OMF has donated $475,000 to local nonprofits, rescued 17,750 pounds of food for Treasure Coast Food Bank, providing 26,800 meals for members of the local community and saved 16,600 pounds of reusable goods that benefited homeless veterans through the Thank You For Your Service nonprofit.

OMF’s long standing partnership with HeadCount has helped deepen this community impact while also registering nearly 5,000 new voters. Respecting the absence of OMF 2024, Soundslinger is committing to donate $3,000 to each partner nonprofit in March 2024. Nonprofit partners include Treasure Coast Food Bank, Thank You For Your Service, Healthy Start, Big Brothers Big Sisters, the End Hunger backpack program via Okeechobee County Schools, Martha’s House, Helping People Succeed, and HeadCount. Soundslinger will be a sponsor of the rodeo and the Speckled Perch Festival in March 2024.

“As owners and safekeepers of our beautiful land, Sunshine Grove, Soundslinger cares deeply about the community that it witnessed come together in those first few years of OMF from 2016 onwards. We are working hard to keep OMF close to its original roots in a big way and reignite the sparks. Those formative years were special to all of us. Hang tight and remember to always Be, Here, Now,” said Soundslinger Founder Rechulski.

The camping festival, which draws attendance of 30,000 to 40,000 fans to the 600-acre Sunshine Grove property in northeast Okeechobee County, has a history of starts and stops.

The first Okeechobee Music and Arts Festival was held March 4-6, 2016, produced by Soundslinger. The festival was originally planned for 2015, but organizers delayed it a year in order to have the time to make it really special. The first year lineup included Mumford & Sons, Kendrick Lamar, Robert Plant, Odesza, Skrillez, Bassnectar, Hall & Oates and the Avett Brothers as well as Preservation Hall Jazz Band.

Annual events followed in 2017 and 2018. In November 2018, it was announced the festival would go on “hiatus.” OMF returned in 2020, now partnered with Insomniac, the organizers of Electric Daisy Carnival. The 2020 OMF was the last big music festival of the year before large public events were shut down due to the covid pandemic.

OMF returned in 2022. The festival was held March 3-6, 2022. In 2023, the festival was held March 2-5.