Festival La Onda, which would have been in its third year at the Napa Valley Expo on the weekend following BottleRock, has been abruptly canceled with no explanation.
There will be no Festival La Onda this year in Napa, as organizers announced Tuesday that the fest was canceled. This comes just two weeks after they announced a lineup including J Balvin, Christian Nodal, Maná, Ivan Cornejo, and others.
A series of "Cancellation Questions" with answers have gone up on the festival website, but there is currently no answer to the question of why the festival is being called off.
"Unfortunately, the 2026 Festival La Onda will not be taking place," the website state. "All ticket buyers who purchased through Front Gate Tickets will receive a full refund in as little as 30 days. We remain hopeful that a future Festival La Onda will be possible. Until then, we are proud of what we created together and deeply grateful to the fans who supported La Onda."
They add, "We remain hopeful that Festival La Onda can return in the future."
As KTVU notes, fans are already speculating online about the reason for the cancellation, with some noting the high ticket price — $550 for two days — and others saying it could be linked heightened immigration enforcement. The latter could be a reason that artists might have wanted to back out of the festival as well.
The Trump administration, which was only just beginning to ramp up its immigration crackdown last May, had previously targeted the festival and revoked the visas of bands it said were glorifying cartel violence. Two of those groups, popular Mexican regional music band Grupo Firme, and another Mexican group La Receta, had to pull out of the festival at the last minute last year due to visa issues.
Festival La Onda had been scheduled for May 30 and 31, the weekend after Memorial Day, when BottleRock typically occupies the same festival grounds. Other acts on this year's lineup included Danny Ocean, Los Tucanes de Tijuana, Los Fabulosos Cadillacs, Paulo Londra, La Arrolladora, El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico, Grupo Niche, Molotov, Hermanos Espinoza, Orishas, and Chiquis.
La Onda brought in 70,000 attendees in 2025, in its second year after launching in 2024. The festival was part of a trend among festival promoters to capitalize on the infrastructure buildouts they do and reuse them for consecutive events, with Another Planet Entertainment doing something similar after Outside Lands the past two years. Coachella, in Southern California, also now occurs over two weekends, and is followed by the country music-focused Stagecoach Festival.
It is possible that anemic ticket sales since the lineup announcement were the primary reason for the cancelation. The festival appeals to a largely Latinx audience, many of whom, especially if they are undocumented, have been curtailing public activities like this over the last year. And as KTVU reported last year, some concertgoers speculated that attendnace was even down last year due to the ramping up of enforcement activity.
Rumors flew that ICE agents were going to be out in force at the Super Bowl this year, and there was likely concern about ICE targeting this festival as well.
Top image: Photo via LaOnda/Instagram
