Really bad news if you were heading to KOKFest later this summer.
The festival announced on Instagram earlier this morning that KOKEFest, the annual festival presented by Texas country station KOKE-FM out of Austin, Texas, has been canceled.
It was slated for August 4th and 5th in Hutto, Texas at Hutto Park at Brushy Creek, just outside of Austin, and featured a really stellar lineup with Whiskey Myers and Jon Pardi headlining respective evenings, along with performances by Riley Green, Kolby Cooper, Sammy Kershaw, William Clark Green, Kaitlin Butts, The Weathered Souls, Kevin Fowler, Treaty Oak Revival, Jacob Stelly and Julianna Rankin.
The festival began in 2017, and has featured Texas-based artists like Cody Johnson and Josh Abbott along with ’90s country legends like Mark Chesnutt and Joe Diffie, quickly becoming a mainstay in the Texas music circuit in terms of summer festivals.
Organizers shared a pretty vague post on Instagram, saying simply that the event is canceled for this year and that ticket holders will receive an email with instructions for getting a refund:
“It is with deep sadness to announce the cancellation of KOKEFEST 2023, August 4th & 5th at Adam Orgain Park in Hutto, TX.
We understand that this comes as a disappointment as this is not a decision we have taken lightly.
Ticket holders will receive an email notification with refund instructions. For additional details visit kokefest.com.”
You can read the full statement on their account here:
And while they didn’t share any further details on any of their social media accounts in terms of why it was called off so abruptly, fans speculated in the comments that it could have something to do with money and their low ticket sales in terms of being able to put the full festival on, as they’ve been discounted repeatedly leading up to today.
Coincidentally, the KOKEFM station shared a post yesterday afternoon announcing that they are no longer an affiliate of the University of Texas, which had been a partnership reaching back to 2015:
