This year's Fillmore Jazz Festival, which had been canceled as of last week due to lack of funds, has been saved thanks to local billionaire Chris Larsen.

The largest free jazz festival on the West Coast, which typically happens the first weekend in July, is back on and scheduled for July 5 and 6, 2025. The New Fillmore reports that crypto billionaire Chris Larsen and his Avenue Greenlight organization stepped in last week and offered to cover the costs of the Fillmore Jazz Festival, shortly after the Fillmore Merchants Association announced its cancellation.

"I am thrilled to announce that the 2025 Fillmore Jazz Festival is officially back on,” said Fillmore Merchants Association president Tim Omi in a statement today.

Omi added that the festival had also received "commitments" of support from District 2 Supervisor Stephen Sherrill and District 5 Supervisor Bilal Mahmood.

While the festival's expenses have been covered for this year, the merchants association has launched a GoFundMe for a Fillmore Jazz Festival Preservation Fund, seeking to raise $28,000.

"Your donations will help preserve the legacy of the festival for years to come — ensuring its vitality, prosperity, and future in the heart of San Francisco, The Fillmore," Omi writes.

Larsen, the founder of Ripple Labs, has been extremely active in local politics in recent years, and has thrown his financial support toward a number of neighborhood initiatives, including a controversial one to install more surveillance cameras around the city. Last year, Larsen helped Mayor London Breed throw a party in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention that was a San Francisco boosterism event featuring a performance by The Killers, and attended by hundreds of Democratic delegates from around the country.

Larsen's organization, Avenue Greenlight, has been issuing relatively small grants each year since 2021 to help revitalize SF neighborhoods, to organizations like the SF Chinese Chamber of Commerce and the Inner Sunset Merchants Association. In 2024, Avenue Greenlight was one of the funders of the Fillmore Jazz Festival, issuing a $15,000 grant toward last year's event.

The Fillmore Merchants Association had announced the festival's cancellation for 2025 at its meeting on April 2, saying that they had not secured funds to put on the festival and were still in debt from last year's 35th anniversary event. The hope was that they could raise money to put on the festival again in 2026.

The total cost to put on the 12-block-long festival on Fillmore Street is around $500,000.

Friday, April 4, was the deadline for submitting a permit application for the event to the city, and that has apparently been taken care of.

The festival website has not yet been updated, but check back there for updates on the lineup as July gets closer.

Photo: mickdelrosario/Instagram