[Update 5/14/25]: While San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie on Monday announced that Dead & Company will play three shows at Golden Gate Park (August 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, 2025) in honor of 60 years of the Grateful Dead, one of the city’s most notable cultural exports, the band’s official pages have remained notably quiet on the engagement in the ensuing days. That silence from the band is likely due to the fact that the permits for the event have yet to be officially approved by city officials.
Per a post on the San Francisco Recreation and Park Commission website about the proposed Dead & Company concerts in Golden Gate Park, “The proposal will go before the Recreation and Park Commission on [Thursday] May 15. The concerts would be presented by [Bay Area-based concert and festival promoter] Another Planet Entertainment and co-produced with Live Nation, in partnership with the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department.”
An item on the Commission’s Thursday, May 15th agenda reads, “Discussion and possible action to authorize staff to issue a permit to Another Planet Entertainment, to hold three ticketed concerts to honor the 60th Anniversary in 2025 of the Grateful Dead featuring Dead & Company in the Golden Gate Park and Polo Fields.”
While official confirmation will have to wait for Thursday’s vote, the measure seems likely to pass. In addition to carrying the mayor’s backing—his announcement arrived on Monday without a hint of bureaucratic doubt—the Commission’s public statements on the matter seem to indicate its support of the concerts.
“Golden Gate Park and the Grateful Dead share a rich, intertwined history that helped shape a cultural era,” said San Francisco Recreation and Park General Manager Phil Ginsburg. “Celebrating their 60th anniversary with a Dead & Company performance in the very place where the Summer of Love took root is a powerful tribute to their legacy. These concerts not only honor their cultural impact but also shine a light on the park’s surrounding neighborhood—its restaurants, local businesses, and vibrant community.”
“If approved,” the Commission’s announcement continues, “the concerts are expected to draw up to 60,000 attendees per day, delivering significant benefits to the city’s hotels, restaurants, and small businesses. Preliminary projections indicate that the weekend could generate tens of millions in economic activity and support hundreds of local jobs. Dead & Company’s three-day show in 2023 generated $31 million in local economic activity. … The proposed concerts would offer food and beverage offerings and a comprehensive transportation plan to ensure safe and sustainable access to the shows. The event would also include enhanced security, extensive cleanup efforts, and strong community engagement to minimize neighborhood impacts.”
The Commission’s post concluded, “More details from Dead & Company—including a first look at what the historic weekend could bring—are coming soon.”
Another Planet Entertainment is quite familiar with hosting events at this location. The Dead & Company concerts at Golden Gate Park would take place the week before Another Planet’s cornerstone event, Outside Lands Music Festival, takes over the space for its 2025 edition.
Stay tuned for more updates on the Dead & Company run at San Francisco, CA’s Golden Gate Park following the Thursday, May 15th permit vote by the San Francisco Recreation and Park Commission. Keep scrolling to read more about the run and the Grateful Dead’s long, notable history of performances in Golden Gate Park.
[5/12/25]: Grateful Dead offshoot Dead & Company will leave the futuristic Sphere in Las Vegas and return to the Dead’s ’60s roots this summer with a three-night run at San Francisco, CA’s Golden Gate Park on August 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, 2025. The concerts, announced by San Francisco mayor Daniel Lurie in a video posted to social media on Monday morning, will come in celebration of the Grateful Dead’s 60th anniversary and coincide with the late Jerry Garcia‘s birthday.
“We have some really big news,” Lurie explains in the video, which appears to have been captured in Golden Gate Park. “Dead & Co. Three shows. August 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, right here in the city that is the home of the Grateful Dead. What better way to celebrate? We’ll see you out here.” A caption attached to the video advises Deadheads to “stay tuned for more details from the band coming soon!” The mayor’s announcement did not include specifics on ticketing.
In a separate written statement, Lurie added, “From Haight-Ashbury and the Grateful Dead house to Ingleside, where Jerry Garcia grew up, the Grateful Dead is embedded in San Francisco’s history. Sixty years later, we’re still enjoying their music — and this summer, we get to enjoy the music of Dead & Company once again. The weekend will celebrate our city’s creative spirit, boost our local economy, and bring generations of fans together. This is more than just a concert — it’s a San Francisco homecoming.”
As a recent Far Out Magazine feature explains of Golden Gate Park and it’s long-running connection to the Dead, “It’s San Francisco’s second-largest park that’s become an essential piece of Grateful Dead’s free show lore. Nestled between the city’s Richmond and Sunset districts, Golden Gate Park hosted numerous Grateful Dead unticketed events. With Garcia and his crew routinely deciding to play their beloved park on the spur of the moment, it’s become impossible to catalogue every free show they played there definitively,” though most counts land around 14 shows in total.
The long list of notable Grateful Dead dates at Golden Gate Park—a few blocks away from 710 Ashbury Street, where the band lived for several years—includes a January 1967 event when the band played alongside Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother, and others in the Human Be-In, a concert widely seen as the prelude to the Summer of Love. The Grateful Dead last played in Golden Gate Park on November 3rd, 1991 as part of an event memorializing beloved San Francisco concert promoter Bill Graham, who had died a week prior in a helicopter crash.
Related: Watch Grateful Dead Play ‘Human Be-In’ At San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park In 1967 [Audio/Video]
The three shows at Golden Gate Park will mark the first public Dead & Company performances outside Sphere since the end of the band’s The Final Tour in 2023 at San Francisco’s Oracle Park. In the time since, the band—which features Grateful Dead stalwarts Bob Weir and Mickey Hart alongside John Mayer, Oteil Burbridge, Jeff Chimenti, and Jay Lane—has mounted a pair of residencies at Sphere billed as Dead Forever. Weir and Hart, along with Grateful Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann, appeared late last year as the guests of honor at the Kennedy Center Honors. Dead & Company also performed earlier this year at the MusiCares’ Persons of the Year gala honoring the Grateful Dead.
Dead & Company are due to return to Sphere for their 46th, 47th, and 48th overall Sphere concerts this Thursday–Saturday, May 15th–17th. Find tickets to the final weekend of Dead Forever at Las Vegas, NV’s Sphere here. Read our recap of the most recent Dead & Company Sphere show here.
Related: Dead & Company 2024 Sphere Recap: Stats, Highlights, & Audio From Every Show
Stay tuned for more information on the GD60 Dead & Company run at Golden Gate Park. Watch the announcement from Mayor Lurie below.
San Francisco is planning to welcome @deadandcompany to Golden Gate Park for three days in August, to mark the 60th anniversary of the Grateful Dead. Stay tuned for more details from the band coming soon! pic.twitter.com/W0EUzTxUF1
— Daniel Lurie 丹尼爾·羅偉 (@DanielLurie) May 12, 2025
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source link
