Northern Lights Festival Boréal is hosting a public roundtable on Sept. 22 to get community members’ input on its financial situation. Organizers say the festival needs to raise $65,000 to keep operating, due to the loss of a major grant. Future of festival up in the air Michelle Murray, the festival’s executive director, told CTV News the organization’s future is uncertain. “The future of Northern Lights Festival Boréal is up in the air,” she said. “If we can’t, if we can’t raise this money, then we can’t put on a 2027 festival.” Murray said the 2026 event was a great festival, but they sold around 20 per cent fewer tickets than in 2025 – which is also a contributing factor. Martin Roy, the director of Festivals and Major Events Canada, said costs have risen. “We estimate that it probably costs 40 per cent or more to organize an event in 2026 compared to 2019,” he said. “That’s quite a raise and we haven’t seen a comparable raise of revenue.” Other northern festivals hopeful However, other festivals around northern Ontario are in high hopes after a great 2026 season, but it is all funding dependent for the non-profits. “We don’t actually make any revenue off of doing the festival,” said Annie Rutherford, the coordinator for the River & Sky Music/Camping Festival. “Every year we kind of are going back and starting at this sort of same place of uncertainty on whether we’re going to get funding or not. But yeah, so far we are in a good position.” Sean Harris, the director of technology and digital strategy for Rock on the River, told CTV News the Timmins music festival’s budgets increased. “Our production budget did go up and so did our artists budget. I think a lot of what, 2026, the success of 2026 relied heavily on the artists,” he said. Harris also credited community support and the festival’s board for much of the event’s success. “We have a very generous sponsor group,” he said. “They’ve helped us for years and years and years, and we couldn’t do it without them. We have a fantastic volunteer army that we couldn’t do Rock on the River without them and all those things combined help the bottom end when we’re booking artists. Harris added that last year they hosted a smaller version of Rock on the River, so this year they could have a larger festival that even set a crowd record for the organization. The Northern Lights Festival Boréal is now looking at that strategy. Looking at variety of options to reduce costs Murray said the organization is looking at different ways to reduce costs. “We’re looking at what would it look like to do a two-day festival? What if we do a one-day banger? What if we get rid of stages? So, we’re looking at a variety in different ways to reduce costs that we can put on another festival,” she said. Murray, however, did say some costs are unavoidable. “But there are so many hard costs that we can’t get away from, you know, you have to pay your technical fees. We have to pay the park fees.” Discussions underway on federal grants Roy said finances are the biggest stress for festivals and they have begun discussions with the federal government to add more money to grants in its next annual budget, calling it a good investment. According to Major Events Canada, the last increase was in 2008. “The economic impact of great of festivals is just amazing and when you see it in communities, you know every dollar that is spent by festival goers goes to restaurants, to hotels, to transportation,” he said. “So, a lot of businesses around festivals and events benefit from this spending. So, they really have an economic and touristic impact.”
