Elk Grove Western Festival, on hiatus for years, to be replaced by new "Spring Palooza"
A Sacramento Valley city's historic western festival will be riding off into the sunset, sort of.
Elk Grove Western Festival organizers announced earlier in August that they were changing the name of the previously long-running event to the Elk Grove Spring Palooza.
It would be a return, of sorts, for the spring-summer celebration in Elk Grove, which last held its western festival in 2019.
The new name is a reflection of the changing community of Elk Grove, now the Sacramento region's second-largest city by population. When the Western Festival was first held in 1957, only about 2,000 people lived in the Elk Grove area. Now, nearly 180,000 people call the City of Elk Grove home (as of the 2020 Census).
"Over time, our community has changed and now it is time for our annual spring celebration to change as well," festival organizers wrote on their new website announcing the name change.
The inaugural opening of the new festival is being planned for the first weekend of May 2026.
Organizers had attempted a post-pandemic return of the western festival in 2024, but those plans fell through. Another revival was attempted and then canceled in 2025, but organizers expressed hopes for a 2026 return.
Ahead of the 2026 event, organizers are holding a contest to design a new logo. People have until Sept. 30 to submit a design.