How Sueños Built Staying Power in a Shaky Latin Festival Market: ‘Our Commitment Is to Win the War, Not the Fight’
Categoria: Musica
As the U.S. Latin festival market grows more volatile, founders Aaron Ampudia and Chris Den Uijl explain why their Chicago event has continued to expand.
Por Billboard | 28/05/2026
Latin music festivals in the U.S. have had a rough run lately. In the past two years alone, Bésame Mucho scrapped its November 2024 L.A. edition with Shakira as headliner, Migo Fest in New York was called off last October before it got underway , and La Onda in Napa abruptly canceled two weeks after unveiling a lineup led by J Balvin, Maná and Christian Nodal. The pressures on the individual festivals varied — from visa issues and broader political concerns to lineup instability, touring competition, soft ticket sales and the rising cost of mounting a festival — but together they underscored how difficult it has become to build a durable, exclusively Latin festival business in the U.S. Related How Visa Issues Are Threatening Artists’ Careers — And the Music Companies That Work With Them Sueños, by contrast, has kept expanding. Now in its fifth year in Chicago’s Grant Park, the festival has become a fixture on the city’s summer calendar while continuing to book top-tier Latin talent. That staying power is especially notable at a moment when the Latin music festival market appears both bigger and more fragile than it did just a few years ago. Not every festival offered a full explanation for why it pulled the plug. But taken together, the recent cancellations have highlighted just how shaky the Latin festival business can be, even as demand for the genre remains strong. Billboard separately reported last September on visa issues as a growing concern for artists and the companies that work with them. In a conversation with Billboard , Sueños and La Familia Presenta co-founders Aaron Ampudia and Chris Den Uijl spoke about what has allowed the Sueños festival to keep growing, from deep ties to its audience to city-specific lineup curation to the importance of consistency when the broader market gets tougher. At this point, Sueños is part of Chicago’s summer calendar. When did it start to feel real that this had become a fixture, not just a new festival? Chris Den Uijl: What’s amazing is that it’s kind of the official kickoff of summer this weekend [in the city], and to be able to tap into that energy gives us a really nice foundation to build off of. It also gives us a roadmap, because it’s our first big festival of the year as well. Related 10 Best Performances at Sueños 2026, Ranked: Los Tucanes de Tijuana, Paulo Londra, Ryan Castro & More Sueños has built a reputation for landing major names — from Shakira to Fuerza Regida, J Balvin and Kali Uchis. How do you decide when a headliner is worth the investment? Den Uijl: There are a couple different ways we look at it. There’s the hard-ticket data, the streaming data, all of those metrics. But there’s also that community touch. We always have our dream lineups and we’re constantly trying to create them, but sometimes artists have different plans. A big part of what we love doing is finding artists earlier in their cycle — the acts that are playing at 2 p.m. one year and