This document presents frequently asked questions and answers related to the site decision for Firefly 2026. If you have any questions not yet covered, please email board@fireflyartscollective.org. We will endeavor to update this FAQ regularly for the next few months.
[Webmaster’s note: I’ve removed the names of the locations per typical site practice. Subscribers to the Announcements email list can find them there.]
Yes! While we’ve been in the previous location for quite a while, this is actually the fourth location where Firefly has been held. Firefly was founded as the Boston Regional Burn in 2003, even though the event itself was initially held about 3.5 hours away. Firefly is wherever we gather, and where Firefly Arts Collective produces its primary annual festival as a container for our mission to foster a collaborative environment and community for participatory arts, encouraging people to express their creativity, and challenging them to extend their concept of both community and art. It’s not the location that makes Firefly, but the creativity and community we all love and share.
From an organizational perspective, absolutely. The planning schedule for a Firefly in the new location is already well ahead of our normal schedule. The increased access options allow plenty of flexibility to identify and solve problems on the new site, familiarize ourselves with the land, and build vendor relationships. (There is more information on impact on theme camps in a separate question later on in this FAQ.)
As a comparison, in 2024 (when the Ring Road was constructed) in Bethel our planning timeline was:
- February 26 – first Festival Committee Meeting
- April 20 – first site visit for improvement assessment
- May 21 – contractor estimate for land improvements
- June 1 – forestry and road work began
- July 1 – Firefly 2024 Early Arrival
Yes, “Firefly” is a Burning Man-sanctioned regional event thrown by the nonprofit called Firefly Arts Collective, which has thrown more 20 events on 4 different properties. It’s not the location that makes it “Firefly,” it’s the community and art we share.
We will likely start work weekends much earlier than usual this year (ideally as soon as the snow melts, which probably means mid-March). If you are interested in seeing it sooner, please reach out to venue@fireflyartscollective.org to be included in site visits.
Firefly Arts Collective would love to see a community-wide event happen there: like many of you, we also have a deep love for those woods. We considered trying to host an event there in addition to our new location, but determined we do not ourselves have the resources to produce two events in 2026. Thus, our focus will be on producing the event at our intended site. Firefly is hoping to find a team of community members willing to take the lead on a separate event on a different week in the previous location, and is willing to provide significant support, as desired, in the form of:
- Knowledge sharing (e.g logistics, planning docs)
- Equipment use (traction mats, shade structures, generators)
- Infrastructure support (email, web, ticketing)
- Introduction to vendors (insurance, portable toilets, medical, security)
- Financial support, to the extent we are able and allowed by non-profit laws (seed funding, funding for arts grants, fiscal sponsorship)
If you think this could be you, please reach out to board@fireflyartscollective.org. You don’t need everything figured out yet, we’re happy to talk things through with you.
As with every year, Firefly Arts Collective will support the size of the event for which we have both the volunteers and interest. Our intention (and hope) is for a “full-sized” event which does not exclude those who wish to participate, in line with previous years. The Festival Committee, the group which coordinates event production and volunteering, will determine capacity as we learn more during the planning process. If you want to help ensure that this year’s Firefly can be big enough to support our whole community, please contact our volunteer coordinator about volunteer opportunities!
To give everyone – volunteers, artists, camps, and participants – time to prepare, organizers plan to have more opportunities to visit and work on the land this spring. We will be coordinating with Placement Core to ensure that returning camps will have the most time possible to plan around a new location. Recognizing that this is very different than in past years, Firefly event organizers will be reaching out to individual theme camps to ask what sort of support they need in a move to the new location.
If you are interested in being part of Placement Core to develop processes for this year’s event, please contact placement@fireflyartscollective.org.
We chose the new site in large part for its potential to be a long-term home of Firefly that supports event growth, addresses many of our ongoing and future concerns, and facilitates bringing the community together more easily throughout the year. That being said, anything could happen in the future – we want to be cognizant of how any given location affects our event and community. The Board and Venue Committee will be evaluating alternative sites on a regular basis going forward. If you are looking to get involved in site research and evaluation or have a site to suggest, please reach out to venue@fireflyartscollective.org.
Shortly after the 2025 event we announced the formation of a committee to consider alternative locations for future Firefly events. Since then, the Venue Committee has been doing precisely that – investigating more than 100 potential locations from campgrounds, to farms, to intentional communities, reaching out to 30 locations, and visiting 4 different locations throughout the autumn and winter.
Having identified several promising locations, the Venue Committee and Board participated in multiple site visits, discussions with landowners on vision for their property and our event, negotiation of use terms, and conversations with local fire, police, and political officials. In January, we held a Town Hall with Planning and Camp Leads to discuss questions, concerns, options, and other feedback about moving and about site selection, which was followed by a detailed survey on sentiment across multiple sites.
Based on this and other feedback from core Firefly contributors, the Board met for six hours on Saturday, January 31st and came to a consensus that our choice of site for 2026 was [new location].
Firefly has been in its previous location for 17 years (our 4th location since our founding), at the expanded site across multiple properties for 14, and with greater parking for 4, and we’ve invested in substantial land improvements in lieu of rent for many of those years, so it was a hard step for us to consider a change from a place where we have become very comfortable. We all have great love for the woods of Vermont in our hearts, and will continue to remain connected to this land in the future.
There are many reasons for making a shift in our location, and that played a role in the decision-making process. Just a few of these include:
- One of the properties where our event is held changed hands several times over the past few years, leading to a substantial shift in landowner relationships and volunteer challenges in planning the 2025 event and the possibility of a 2026 event.
- Difficulties with terrain; despite Accessibility Core’s valiant efforts, access for people and equipment across the site remains a top complaint across our community, and prevents some community members from participating.
- Increasing land maintenance; Firefly pays a substantial amount to contractors every year to remove dangerous trees and reinforce trails – we are the only ones contributing to these capital investments. The current site is a pine forest reaching a natural end of life, and requiring increasing forestry for safety.
- Limited open space for new camps and participants; the most accessible parts of our event has been stable for years, with very few opportunities for new camps and new participants to be involved, resulting in a low return rate for new Fireflies.
- Parking, arrival, and departure challenges; Moving people and equipment on and off the site and parking participant vehicles remains one of the most serious logistical challenges for Firefly every year, and will only become more difficult as we grow.
- Challenges with managing landowner relationships across three event sites; while we believe that we could reach agreements with all landowners, the additional friction introduced by 2025 changes continue to require a large commitment of time and effort from very limited volunteer resources.
These are the most practical matters related to a change in location for Firefly. From a more philosophical perspective, we are also governed by the 10 Principles of Burning Man, as well as our mission statement: “to foster a collaborative environment and community for participatory arts, encouraging people to express their creativity, and challenging them to extend their concept of both community and art.” Staying in the same place, in the same configuration for so long has not challenged our creative community, and has been a major impediment to being radically inclusive. Moving to a new location full of new opportunities (and new challenges) aligns with these goals.
We felt that delaying a move until later years would only make sense if we could be in a substantially different situation in those years. If 2026 proceeded just as the previous year and we then faced the same challenges again for 2027, nothing would have been gained from this hesitation and critical volunteer enthusiasm and continued land investment would be lost. The planning schedule for a Firefly the new location is already well ahead of our normal schedule, where we cannot even visit the previous land until April due to weather constraints.
As an alternative, several different plans were considered for a “softer” move, among them the idea of running a smaller event at the old or new sites in 2026, or running two events, at both sites. Shrinking Firefly 2026 was immediately unappealing for obvious reasons, no matter where it would be held; on the other hand, running a second event in 2026 appeared beyond the resources and volunteer force available to the Firefly Arts Collective. These factors, along with those discussed earlier in this announcement, led us to decide to focus our efforts on a single event at the new location for 2026.
While one body of critical volunteers said they would not continue to organize for an event in the previous location, others said they would only organize for an event there. These volunteers may be the right people to carry forward a separate event there this year or in future years, while Firefly Arts Collective works towards a successful event in the new location.
Not exactly; we spent more than our income in that specific year, drawing from our savings which is intended exactly for these sort of larger expenses, and also as a buffer against catastrophic circumstances (e.g. weather, war, pandemic) that would require that we cancel our event after major expenditures have already been made. Firefly Arts Collective Inc maintains approximately $150,000 in cash on hand for event and organizational continuity.
The Ring Road allowed us to immediately expand the size of the event (and number of tickets sold) the year this work was done, and was mission-aligned work. It was an attempt to solve other problems with the previous site through capital investment, but our Pay-What-You-Can ticketing data afterwards indicates this is not the approach favored by the Firefly community.
As additional context, Firefly regularly pays more for capital improvements on the land we use than we do in rent – investments that Firefly is solely responsible for, but that primarily benefit the landowner. This is done in lieu of higher rent, so can be considered part of our overall rental cost (and not something that is owned as a capital item by Firefly). Our total land expenses have been continually rising due to rent increases by landowners as well as expansion in forestry safety work required due to using larger areas of an aging forest:
| Year | Rent | Improvements | Total | Tickets |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | $25,560.00 | $30,000.00 | $55,560.00 | 1600 |
| 2025 | $24,869.00 | $23,500.00 | $48,369.00 | 1551 |
| 2024 | $21,000.00 | $90,000.00 | $111,000.00 | 1399 |
| 2023 | $16,368.00 | $37,200.00 | $53,568.00 | 1364 |
| 2022 | $13,965.00 | $23,500.00 | $37,465.00 | 1164 |
| 2019 | $17,576.00 | $8,200.00 | $25,776.00 | 1298 |
| 2018 | $14,862.00 | $8,050.00 | $22,912.00 | 1290 |
| 2017 | $13,572.00 | $10,390.00 | $23,962.00 | 1122 |
| 2016 | $12,600.00 | $9,473.00 | $22,073.00 | 1050 |
| 2015 | $11,400.00 | $14,295.00 | $25,695.00 | 950 |
| 2014 | $10,350.00 | $6,353.00 | $16,703.00 | 835 |
This is trending in the current location toward $60,000/yr, which is not supportable by our current budgeting and Pay-What-You-Can ticketing.
In 2019 Firefly introduced “No Fixed Price” ticketing as an experiment to foster inclusion; all tickets are “pay what you can” with a published expected cost based on budget. We’re very proud of this program, and it’s been successful at eliminating stigma for requesting reduced-price tickets as well as being a fascinating experiment in the value the community assigns to the event.
Due to cost increases, driven by land costs above, but also other major cost centers including art grants, outside medical contractors, eliminating parking passes, and UTV rentals, our target cost for PWYC tickets has gone up. As this has increased, we have missed our price target for running the event at break-even by increasing amounts:
| Year | Budget | Avg Paid | Variance |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | $185 | $164.73 | -10.96% |
| 2024 | $170 | $153.62 | -9.64% |
| 2023 | $125 | $121.38 | -2.90% |
| 2022 | $118 | $126.54 | 7.24% |
| 2019 | $95 | $101.78 | 7.14% |
As previously noted, in 2025 a landowner of part of the site made several requirements for contractual changes which we, and the majority of Fireflies later surveyed, believed threatened the nature of the event. This led to a negotiation process very late in the spring of 2025, during which the status of that year’s event was fundamentally uncertain, crucial event planning was delayed, and several key volunteers were burned out. A temporary solution was reached that spring, allowing the event to continue for 2025.
Looking towards 2026, further negotiations occurred throughout the fall and winter, culminating in a mediated discussion this January. While discussions, both pre-mediation and during mediation, with the landowner were effective, we ultimately did not feel comfortable with continuing to work with the landowner in 2026. Mediation only addresses negotiation of certain contractual terms, and did not give us confidence in the relationship necessary for the consistency of a Firefly in the previous location this year and in ongoing years.
While we made another positive step toward improving our relationship with the Landowner by issuing a mutual statement helping further define roles, expectations, and limitations between the parties, more work is needed to rebuild that relationship. Accordingly, we plan to follow through on our commitments in that joint statement by designating liaisons to continue to communicate with the new previous-site landowner and to continue discussions shortly after Firefly 2026.
We are immensely grateful to the mediator who certainly got us much further than we could have on our own and helped to clarify the situation for us. For more details on the mediation, we refer you to the reports from the mediator on the Blink list and Facebook.
In mid-January, after the Planning and Camp Leads Town Hall meeting to discuss the options and motivations for a new location, we shared a survey that asked detailed questions on sentiment for multiple sites under consideration, with the previous site as the known baseline. We received 103 responses, including from 44 distinct theme camps!
The most notable results from the quantitative data was net positive interest in having a Firefly event at any location – that is, “no event” was deeply unpopular, and on average the responses were neutral-or-better on all sites (except access for the furthest site from Boston under consideration, in Esperance, NY).
The previous site was the most popular (by an average of half a scale step) in all categories except “convenience to Boston”, which is entirely expected – we know all the details of the land there, and know we can always do “the same thing as last year.” The new location ranked close except for larger and sound-oriented camps concerns about being able to execute their vision. It also ranked about a half-step higher on all categories for people who had visited the site (versus those who had not).
From the qualitative responses the most common concerns about the previous site were physical accessibility and a lack of space for new camps and participants, and the biggest opportunities were comfort, stability, and incremental innovation. For the intended new site the most common concerns were uncertainty around amplified sound levels, and the need to adapt existing camps and Cores to a new site. The biggest opportunities in the new location were novelty and inclusion, better physical accessibility, and varied options for terrain.
From this data we were able to determine that the most important thing for Fireflies was having a Firefly 2026 that everyone could participate in, but there are targeted areas that need to be resolved for confidence in being successful in the new location. We’re taking specific steps around sound testing, early access for planning, and investigating how to help support theme camps in the move to make sure Firefly 2026 is a vibrant, creative, and engaging event.
Probably not; we continue to maintain a professional and optimistic relationship with all of our land partners in the previous site, and look forward to producing or supporting future events in that location! Giving credence to speculation and rumor of the challenges faced in 2025 would damage the trust necessary to build things together in the future. There are some topics where we cannot answer specific questions for as long as we wish to keep the door open to future collaboration there, and also to set an example for the kind of community respect, professionalism, and civility we value.
Firefly is an all-volunteer organization and we encourage everyone to work towards creating an environment that supports everyone who volunteers or wishes to do so, as that’s necessary for the success of the future vision of all Firefly events.
The Participant Code of Conduct is enforced year-round. For most of the year, reports of violation of the Code of Conduct are investigated by the volunteer Conduct Committee according to their policies and procedures. The Conduct Committee comes to consensus and makes a recommendation and justification for an action (i.e., a temporary or permanent ban, a warning, non-action) to the Board. The Board almost always follows the Conduct Committee’s recommendations.
During the three weeks leading up to the annual event and during the event itself, the Conduct Committee does not have time to complete an investigation to their standards. Because of this, reports can be sent directly to the Board, which makes a provisional decision, such as revoking a ticket or removing a participant from the event, based on the information available to them. Following the event, the Board or Conduct Committee then undertakes a proper investigation, which could lead to various decisions including bans (or apologies).
In either scenario, the Board is ultimately responsible for the results (such as the consequences of choosing to ban someone or choosing not to ban someone). As such, this responsibility is taken extremely seriously. It’s not possible that everyone in the community will agree about every decision to exclude or include a participant, especially since we all have different values, experiences, and have heard different sets of the facts: this is why the best we can do is the consensus of a group. Disagreement with a particular outcome does not reflect the absence of care or process.
As part of our commitment to empower community members who have experienced harm, neither the Board nor the Conduct Committee proactively self-initiate investigations (e.g., by searching for criminal histories of those who register in the ticket lottery). We depend on reports from the community before we take action, and strongly encourage reporting of incidents via the Conduct Committee’s report form. Please don’t assume that “everybody knows” about a particular problem: we are a huge community that only comes together once a year, so this often isn’t the case!
Firefly was the first Burn to create such a process, and it is a compromise built atop years of experience with specific cases. Changes to the process are always open to discussion, particularly if you have specific changes in mind (and preferably not during the busiest times of the Firefly season). If you have ideas, please reach out to conduct-committee@fireflyartscollective.org. And you can follow this link if you are interested in joining the Conduct Committee yourself.
Firefly Arts Collective is organized as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit public benefit charitable organization with a mission to support artistic endeavors – there’s a specific mission statement. The Board (currently) has two roles. One is to be legally and financially responsible for the production of the annual festival, and the other is to run the 501(c)(3) in keeping with the mission. This description isn’t the canon of “how it must be” but is the best account of the current reality – and it’s a useful way to understand the constraints on and bases for various decisions the Board makes.
Event Producer Role: The Board is the Producer of Record of the festival–it signs the contracts and holds (collectively and personally) the legal liability if something goes wrong. Under the bylaws there are a few event-producer decisions that the Board can make, but most choices in how the event happens are devolved to specific volunteer committees and the community at large: you. The goal is for the event to be a container for expression.
There’s tension here because Board members are volunteering to produce an event with substantial risks for no compensation, but without a lot of ability to make decisions to reduce those risks. Ultimately the reason that certain event-production decisions rest with the Board is because those people have volunteered to take on the risk involved in making them.
Organizational Custodian Role: The Board simultaneously but distinctly runs the operations of the nonprofit – filing tax paperwork, maintaining banking relationships, making sure the assets of the organization are maintained. This is never exciting. The restrictions here are that the assets must be used for the public-benefit charitable mission of the 501(c)(3) organization, which is fairly broad, but notably we are not set up as a 501(c)(4) or 501(c)(7) nonprofit which would be for the purposes of benefiting its membership or a specific community.
While this structure where the same people volunteer for both these roles has been stable and effective for a long time, they are not the same functions and there is sometimes confusion about which purposes various Board decisions are supporting. This is a useful breakdown for statements one hears about “the Board must do XYZ”: this is either a claim that (a) the members of the Board should volunteer to do XYZ as event producers and in fact can do so under the bylaws; or that (b) XYZ is part of the charitable purpose of the 501(c)(3) and therefore FAC should fund it. Statements where neither (a) nor (b) make sense are not something the Board does.
Some examples:
- “Why doesn’t the Board hire my friend Alex as the porto vendor?” is a type (a) statement about event production decisions. Whether an event producer wants to work with your friend depends on many factors.
- “I want to bring my art car to Firefly but the bridge isn’t wide enough, the Board should build a wider bridge so I can bring my art.” is both a statement about event production choices (in this case ones which are delegated to DPW and the Board does not decide) and a statement that investing in a wider bridge to have larger art is part of the mission of FAC (which is true). The Board has wide discretion to decide whether the benefit of your art car coming justifies the particular expenses necessary. If that is justified, however, there is no expectation that the Board or DPW personally volunteer to expand the bridge, and may approve a grant for you to buy boards and do it yourself.
- “The Board should ban X person because they did Y action.” This is another event production decision. For most of the year, responsibility for considering this is delegated to the Conduct Committee but in the immediate lead-up to and during the event, the Board would handle this directly.
So, and pointedly this time, a discussion of “should Firefly move this year” involves a discussion of “who wants to volunteer to produce an event in the old location, a new location, or elsewhere” and when there’s a consensus of the Board, stepping forward to collectively produce that event. Looking to the future, we’re also considering “what is the role of the nonprofit in various possible events?” This could mean Firefly Arts Collective support for other events we are not ourselves responsible for.
Yes; this has been a regular topic of conversation over the past 23 years. We haven’t made changes yet, but here are just some of the considerations:
- Our current model is a common way to organize a 501(c)(3) board, and most other options presented have obvious complications – we have, in fact, considered them on many occasions, and will continue to discuss in the future, but they don’t address the problems we experience while making decisions. (The full discussion of this would be several pages and dozens of volunteer hours, but we’re happy to have those conversations outside of peak event planning season.)
- We have a decades-long history of being able to make collective consensus decisions with a group of committed people from different parts of our community. Our Bylaws strongly promote consensus over arbitrative voting, and having a self-selected group of many different options that can work together constructively has maintained this.
- We would actually prefer to make decision-making even more decentralized – many participants express views and act as though there is more hierarchy than we believe exists today
- One reason the Board decides event location is that they are legally liable for the event in the event producer role discussed above, and separating these roles is something of great interest. Firefly took steps toward this when creating the Festival Committee in 2015.
- Some Burns have Event Producers separate from the Board. We’re discussing whether moving further to that model would further our mission and help FAC empower the community to support events wherever you want to produce them.
- We don’t have time for many of these changes in time for Firefly 2026, but if you’re interested in helping discuss the different options, reach out to dan@fireflyartscollective.org.