Longtime festivalgoers say the final Sundance in Utah may also be their
last
[January 26, 2026]
By HANNAH SCHOENBAUM
PARK CITY, Utah (AP) — Attendees at this year's Sundance Film Festival
could not stand in line, step onto a shuttle bus or walk into a lounge
without hearing one common question: “Will you go to the festival when
it moves to Boulder?”
Butch Ward has been a Sundance regular since the early '90s, but like
many longtime festivalgoers who fell in love with its charming mountain
hometown of Park City, he said he won't be following Sundance to its new
setting in Colorado next year.
The media professional from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, considers this the
last year of the festival in its true form, “because a Sundance outside
Utah just isn't Sundance.”
That sentiment was shared by many attendees who had found their happy
place at the Utah festival.
A group of women walked down Main Street on Saturday wearing yellow
scarves that read “Our last Sundance 2026.” Another festivalgoer with a
film reel balanced atop her head held a sign dubbing this “the last
Sundance.”
“It’s not just a resistance to change,” said Suzie Taylor, an actor who
has been coming to Sundance on and off since 1997. "Robert Redford's
vision was rooted here. And isn’t it poetic that he passed right before
the last one?”
For Julie Nunis, the joy of Sundance is grounded in the tradition
Redford created in Park City more than four decades ago. The actor from
Los Angeles has come to the festival nearly every year since 2001 and
said she doesn’t want to experience it any other way.
Redford, who died in September at age 89, established the festival and
development programs for filmmakers in the Utah mountains as a haven for
independent storytelling far from the pressures of Hollywood. Before his
death, Redford, who attended the University of Colorado Boulder, gave
his blessing for the festival to relocate.
Boulder emerged victorious from a yearlong search in which numerous U.S.
cities vied to host the nation’s premier independent film festival.
Sundance organizers decided to search for a new home because they said
the festival had outgrown the ski town it helped put on the map and
developed an air of exclusivity that took focus away from the films.
Some film professionals and volunteers said they were willing to give
Boulder a try but worried Sundance could lose its identity outside its
longtime home.
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Pedestrians walk down Main Street on the first day of the 2026
Sundance Film Festival on Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026, in Park City,
Utah. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)
 Lauren Garcia, who has come from
Seattle to volunteer at Sundance for the past six years, said
curiosity may lead her to Boulder for future festivals. She
described feeling a sadness lingering over the final Utah festival
and wondered if Redford's death means it's time for Sundance to
close this chapter.
“How is the festival going to express itself in a new place and
continue his legacy? It's a huge question mark," said Garcia, an
anthropologist. "The truth is, it's never going to be the same now
that he's gone.”
Redford's daughter, Amy Redford, who serves on the Sundance
Institute's board of trustees, said she's excited about the
transition, even if it comes with a steep learning curve.
Nik Dodani, an actor and filmmaker passionate about telling LGBTQ+
stories, said he’s excited to experience the festival in a new state
that embraces diversity, but he worries the departure will create a
“vacuum” of those stories in Utah.
Amy Redford assures that won't be the case.
The piece of her father's legacy that she said meant the most to him
— the institute’s lab programs for emerging screenwriters and
directors — will remain in Utah, at the resort he founded, about 34
miles (54 kilometers) south of Park City. Filmmakers will continue
to “create the civil discourse that we really need to be having in
the state," she said.
“Boulder, Colorado, will be a new adventure. It will feel like our
beginnings when we were trying to figure things out, and that will
have an important impact on what we do,” she told The Associated
Press. “But the way that we meet artists where they need to be,
well, that evolves out of a heartbeat that is here" in Utah.
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