The Sundance Film Festival is getting on its horse and moving to Boulder.
After months of multimillion-dollar funding appeals from cities across the country, the nonprofit film festival board announced Thursday that the famed event will move from its longtime home in Park City, Utah, to Colorado beginning in 2027.
Boulder beat out a combined bid from Park City and Salt Lake City, as well as one from Cincinnati, which revealed earlier Thursday that it was no longer in the running.
Boulder won due to its attractive mix of culture, including its mountain setting, technology sector, arts community, college population and community values, officials said at a celebratory press conference outside the Boulder Theater on Thursday afternoon.
The city is set to host the event from 2027 through 2036, with a potential 86,000 attendees and $132 million in economic activity, as Park City reported in 2024.
“Boulder will help write the future of the film industry,” Gov. Jared Polis said to raucous applause outside the Boulder Theater, echoing Sundance officials who praised the city’s amenities.
Dozens of people hugged and pumped their fists at the giddy Thursday event, where music played loudly and more than 100 people showed up to listen to the politicians, city boosters, and Sundance officials. Oscar-winning, Boulder-based filmmakers Daniel Junge and Paula DuPré Pesmen were also in attendance, with Pesmen praising the festival’s potential impact on local filmmakers from the stage.
The news means that Hollywood will now turn its focus toward the Front Range, which should benefit financially in January and February, when the trend-setting festival is held, an otherwise sluggish time of year for hotels and restaurants here. Add to that the promise of hundreds of Hollywood elite in limousines, dozens of red carpets and worldwide media coverage.
In response to a question from The Denver Post, Gov. Polis said the festival will become an “anchor tenant” in the state’s film culture, as it works with students and up-and-coming filmmakers and expands access to resources. He declined to say whether it would help encourage more legislative investment into the state’s film incentive programs, which have lagged far behind neighboring states in encouraging films to shoot here.
“This is an important part of showing how Colorado is here in the entertainment industry and the film industry, and of course, in and of itself, it’s an iconic event that we here in Colorado are going to help write a successful next chapter for.”
Colorado film commissioner Donald Zuckerman started the entire process about two years ago, having reached out to old friend and former producer Gigi Pritzker, who’s now vice chair of the Sundance board, Pritzker said.
Sundance sees the heart of the festival as centered in downtown Boulder, with a variety of existing theaters and venues, and adapted spaces around the pedestrian-only Pearl Street Mall. Various University of Colorado venues are also in play, said Todd Saliman, president of the University of Colorado, in an interview.
“Macky (Auditorium) is really the lynchpin,” added Lori Call, of CU Boulder’s communications department. “They’ve looked at Muenzinger Auditorium, they’ve looked at Glenn Miller Ballroom and they’ve looked at a host of venues affiliated with the (Folsom Field) stadium.”
As with Sundance officials, Gov. Polis has touted Boulder’s mountain backdrop, hotel capacity and Denver International Airport — not to mention festival founder Robert Redford’s ties to the University of Colorado, having attended college there.
Polis and state legislators have been working since last year to shore up incentives for the event, with a potential $34 million state tax credit for Sundance. The incentives would be doled out over the next decade, or about $3 to $5 million per year. A revised legislative bill — which would also leverage $500,000 annually to support “small or existing local film festival entities,” as sponsors put it — passed a final vote on the State Senate floor Friday morning, and is next headed to Polis’ desk.
While most legislators have supported the drive, State Rep. Bob Marshall of House District 43, called it a “taxpayer bribe” in a letter to The Denver Post.”
Now that it’s decided, officials from Sundance, the state, Boulder, and private donors and businesses will spend the next two years shoring up theaters, meeting and party spaces, and lodging options in a collaborative effort. It will include not only the state incentives but work from Boulder’s business boosters to meet Sundance’s high expectations for hosting, and surrounding cities that will absorb out-of-state travelers and related events.
Choosing Boulder cements Colorado’s reputation as a global film destination, joining prestigious events such as the Telluride Film Festival, Aspen Shortsfest, Boulder International Film Festival and Denver Film Festival, Sundance festival director Eugene Hernandez told The Denver Post on Thursday.
He has attended those events, and Sundance wants to play nice with all of them — including Denver’s SeriesFest, often called the “Sundance of television.” Hernandez, a former journalist who founded the respected film site IndieWire, has worked on SeriesFest’s staff in the past.
Like the 2025 Sundance event, which ran from Jan. 23 to Feb. 2 in the resort town of Park City, Boulder’s will be programmed during the early months of the year. The festival was running out of space and goodwill in Park City, especially during the height of its lucrative ski season, Variety reported.
Sundance and business leaders vowed to make an impact outside of Boulder by continuing to support local filmmakers as part of its development programs, and to stay ahead of the festival’s needs, such as more venues and capacity for attendees at one of the world’s premiere independent film festivals.
“It all starts today,” festival director Hernandez said.
