SXSW goes small this year
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A South by Southwest sign in front of the Paramount Theatre in Austin. Photo: Nick Piacente/SXSW Conference & Festivals via Getty Images
A revamped South by Southwest — one that's smaller and playing out across Austin neighborhoods — goes into full flight Friday.
Why it matters: A lot is riding on the fest overhaul, both for the bottom line of SXSW itself and for the Austin hotel and restaurant industries that rely on the annual influx of visitors.
By the numbers: SXSW said 309,300 people attended the 2025 festival, down from 417,400 in 2019. Attendance numbers are expected to be on par with last year, SXSW organizers tell Axios.
- Short-term rental bookings are down 23% across Austin during SXSW this year compared to the festival period last year, according to data from AirDNA, a short-term rental data company.
Driving the news: SXSW is two days shorter than in past years, and the Austin Convention Center's redevelopment has pushed panels and other events to a wider mix of hotels, theaters and venues downtown.
- Organizers are also rolling out a new reservation system for the first time this year to manage access to popular sessions and screenings.
- The condensed timeline means that all three tracks — innovation (formerly interactive), film and TV, and music — will run concurrently.
Between the lines: SXSW will still host plenty of star power.
- Steven Spielberg is delivering Friday's keynote at 1pm.
- Artists including Lola Young, Charley Crockett and BigXthaPlug are set to perform during the festival. Country artists Crockett and Lainey Wilson, along with indie-folk singer Noah Kahan, are expected to promote their new Netflix documentaries, which will premiere during the fest.
- The film and TV lineup also includes buzzy screenings, like "Over Your Dead Body" starring Jason Segel and Samara Weaving and thriller-comedy "Drag" starring Lizzy Caplan, Lucy DeVito and John Stamos.
Yes, but: The crisis SXSW faced in 2020, when it was forced to shut down the festival at the last minute, still hangs over the company.
- The company had to lay off a third of its workforce that year.
- Following a 2021 edition forced to go virtual, it recruited an outside investor, with the SXSW founders selling half of the company to Penske Media Corporation.
What they're saying: Two straight years of almost no income was "not really survivable without outside investment," festival co-founder Nick Barbaro told Texas Monthly's Dan Solomon.
- But last year, Penske drove the firing of chief of programming and company president Hugh Forrest.
The intrigue: In his story, Solomon raises the specter of Penske moving the event to Las Vegas and its Rolling Stone-branded hotel. (Penske did not immediately return an Axios request for comment.)
- Beyond revenue loss to hotels and restaurants here, such a move would call into question Austin's underlying brand, a Downtown Austin Alliance executive told him.
- If such a move ever happened, it would prompt profound questions, the executive, Jenell Moffett told him: "'Is Austin not as cool as it needs to be to attract something like this? Are we changing? Who are we?' "
What we're watching: Whether the new, decentralized version of SXSW revives an event still reeling from the pandemic — or further diminishes it.