New Name, New Venue, Same Mission
Outside Days Levels Up Its Music Game
For the second year in a row, we had the chance to cover Outside Days, and this year, the festival felt like it was stepping into a new identity, literally and figuratively.
What used to be known as the Outside Festival has been rebranded as Outside Days, presented by Capital One x REI Co-op. The mission hasn't changed, Outside is still on a mission to get everyone outside, but the move marks a clear shift for an event now in its third year. This time around, Outside Days landed at Denver's Auraria Campus, a change from last year's home at Civic Center Park.
The biggest change, though, was the music. Last year's festival felt spread thin across outdoor culture broadly, with the sets, set times, and overall flow lacking a bit of attention to detail. This year leaned hard into live performance, with better set times, stage placement, and noticeably more room to actually move and watch a show instead of fighting for a sightline.
Here's how it played out, day by day.
Day One — May 29
A handful of performances stood out across the three days.
Goth Babe's set was one of them. The guy simply knows how to move a crowd. Beach balls flew overhead, someone surfed the crowd on an inflatable air mattress, and the whole field turned into one big unit moving on instinct. People danced, jumped, lost track of time. Goth Babe fed off it, clearly thrilled to be there, and that energy bounced right back at him. He was also one of the featured speakers at the festival.
Photo by Em Wilson
Photo by Em Wilson
Death Cab for Cutie closed the night, and walking in, I wouldn't have called myself a fan. Walking out, that changed. Their set was less about spectacle and more about letting the songs do the work, especially the lyrics. With every line, it felt like lead singer Ben Gibbard was reaching for one specific person in that crowd, and somehow, he found them.
Photo by Em Wilson
Day Two — May 30
Day two was a slower burn. We let the music play in the background and spent most of our time wandering the vendors, talks, and films instead.
Outside Days isn't just a concert lineup. It's built around film, talks, and outdoor culture more broadly, and that side of the festival held its own this year. The clear highlight was the screening of Jack Johnson's new surf film, SURFILMUSIC, which was a treat to watch before its full release. It was followed by a live Q&A with director Emmett Malloy, pulling back the curtain on how the film came together. If you get the chance to watch it when it, take it. We walked out feeling incredibly inspired.
Photo by Em Wilson
After the film, we spent the rest of the afternoon just exploring the grounds.
This is also where the location change showed its trade-offs. The new venue made parking dramatically easier, a real win. But it came at the cost of something last year's setup had figured out: vendor and food flow. This year, the flow wasn't quite there. It's a fixable problem for a festival still settling into a new layout, but one worth mentioning.
It didn't help that food stalls weren't allowed to sell anything beyond water, meaning if you wanted food and a drink, you were standing in two separate lines. And water itself wasn't immune either: with only two stations on-site, the lines ran surprisingly long given the heat. A third station, ideally closer to the main food vendors, feels less like a nice-to-have and more like a necessity.
Day Three — May 31
Day three was the most musically exciting of the weekend, and it hit a little close to home with the nostalgia.
Grouplove opened with a stellar set, and their hit "Tongue Tied" had everyone up off their picnic blankets and dancing within seconds. This is a band clearly still in it for the love of the music, and that showed in every bit of chemistry on that stage.
Photo by Em Wilson
Tash Sultana followed, and they were every bit as good as expected. Watching them build a full, layered sound live, looping instrument after instrument on stage, was the kind of set that sticks with you long after the festival ends.
Photo by Em Wilson
Cage the Elephant closed out the night in full rockstar fashion. Frontman Matt Shultz tore around the stage in total chaos while somehow never missing a word, and the band moved as one tight, relentless unit behind him. It was the kind of finish that sends you home buzzing with adrenaline.
Photo by Em Wilson
Three years in, Outside Days is clearly still evolving: a new name, a new home, and a sharper focus on music as its centerpiece. The roots of a great festival are there: strong programming, a venue with real upside, and a mission that resonates with the outdoor community it's trying to build. Auraria Campus gave it room to grow into something bigger, even if a few logistical kinks need ironing out before next year.
If this year was about Outside Days finding its footing in a new space, next year is the one that decides whether it can hold onto that music-first momentum, and turn its growing pains into the kind of festival people start planning their whole summer around.
