Sand in My Boots History: From Hangout Fest to 2027

Sand in My Boots comes back to the public beach in Gulf Shores, Alabama on May 21–23, 2027, for only its second edition. The festival is older than that number suggests. It runs on the same sand, under the same city franchise and with the same producers as the Hangout Music Festival, which held this stretch of the Gulf every May from 2010. Several acts on the 2027 bill have played here before, some of them more than a decade ago. This is that history, built from contemporary reporting and the city's own records.

A Festival Named After a Restaurant

Hangout was started in 2009 by A.J. Niland, Shaul Zislin and Lilly Zislin. The Zislins own The Hangout, the beachfront restaurant the festival took its name from, and the festival's address, 101 East Beach Boulevard, is still that restaurant's. When the Gulf Shores city council approved the event in December 2009, it also let the music run an hour later than city noise rules normally allowed. The festival has needed the city's permission every year since, and as the rest of this story shows, the city has used that leverage.

The first edition ran May 14–16, 2010, with the Trey Anastasio Band, Zac Brown Band and John Legend at the top. Its timing was bad: the Deepwater Horizon oil spill had hit the Gulf weeks earlier. One name from that bill is back in 2027. Girl Talk played a 7:15 slot on opening night, May 14, 2010, a set the Mobile Press-Register expected to upstage the weekend's Grammy-winning headliners. He returned in 2011 to the Boom Boom Room tent, where his crew fired rolls of toilet paper into the crowd with leaf blowers while the sun was still over the water.

Growing Up on the Sand

The festival grew fast. By 2011 the headliners were Foo Fighters, Paul Simon and Widespread Panic, and the beach setting stayed the draw: swimming at designated spots is still part of the deal in 2027.

The 2013 edition matters most to this year's bill. Kings of Leon closed its first night, May 17, 2013, in only their second American show since coming off the road in 2011, on a bill also headlined by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers and Stevie Wonder. Caleb Followill told the crowd it was the best American audience the band had seen in a long time, and the set slipped in one song nobody had heard yet, "It Don't Matter." Fourteen years later the band returns to the same beach as a headliner, with their 10th album, O My Beloved, released on November 6, 2026.

The Goldenvoice Years

In 2015 Goldenvoice, the company behind Coachella, entered a joint venture to produce Hangout. Goldenvoice is owned by AEG, and AEG Presents is the second-largest presenter of live events in the world after Live Nation. That deal is why Sand in My Boots counts as a sibling of Coachella and Stagecoach today, and why AEG Presents, not the restaurant owners, now runs the festival.

Under Goldenvoice the bills tilted toward pop, rap and electronic music. The 2019 edition, which Pollstar counted as the tenth, was topped by Travis Scott, Cardi B, Vampire Weekend, The Lumineers, Khalid and Kygo. The Norwegian producer is the one name from that headliner row on the 2027 lineup, and his 2026 singles with Nashville singers make him a less odd fit for this bill than he would have been in 2019.

Two Lost Years and a Last Hangout

The 2020 edition, set for May 15–17 with Red Hot Chili Peppers, Post Malone, Billie Eilish and Lana Del Rey at the top, never happened; the city told organizers in March 2020 that the pandemic ruled it out. The 2021 edition, scheduled for May 14–16, was postponed and quietly never took place. Hangout came back in 2022 with Post Malone among the headliners and proof of vaccination required at the gate.

The last Hangout-branded festival ran May 17–19, 2024, with Lana Del Rey, Zach Bryan and ODESZA headlining. Two 2027 names were on that announced bill: Nelly and Koe Wetzel. In hindsight, a Zach Bryan headline set and an East Texas country-rocker further down the bill were early signs of where the festival was about to go.

The Wallen Takeover

In fall 2024 the organizers announced that the 2025 event would be renamed Sand in My Boots and curated by Morgan Wallen. It was billed as a one-year takeover, and on paper it still was Hangout: the city permit listed Hangout Music Festival, LLC, care of AEG Presents, as the event owner. The name comes from the opening song on Wallen's 2021 album Dangerous: The Double Album. All 40,000 tickets sold out in under two hours that October, something al.com noted Hangout hadn't managed in years.

The first Sand in My Boots ran May 16–18, 2025, with Wallen, Post Malone, Brooks & Dunn and HARDY at the top. Wallen told Billboard he booked artists he actually listens to, which explained the mix: rising country acts, mostly Southern rappers and a few indie bands like The War on Drugs and Future Islands. Two people from that weekend are back. Ella Langley, from Hope Hull outside Montgomery, played her own set and then joined Riley Green during his to sing "Don't Mind If I Do." She returns in 2027 as a headliner. Juicy J came with Three 6 Mafia and asked the crowd for a mosh pit in the sand; this time he's booked under his own name, and his brother Project Pat is on the bill too.

Wallen's fourth album, I'm the Problem, came out on opening day, and he closed the festival on Sunday with seven of its songs played live for the first time. The grounds were themed on his catalog, from the Dangerous Stage at one end of the beach to the 7 Summers Sandbar and the Love Somebody Lane wedding chapel. Afterward his foundation gave more than $200,000 in instruments to five Alabama schools.

Why There Was No 2026 Festival

The 2025 festival was the last one covered by the city's original 10-year franchise agreement. Rather than renew it in advance, the city held off on the extension until it could judge how the Wallen edition went and hear from residents. Local business owners described the new crowd as more affluent and better behaved than Hangout's. The council approved a two-year extension in late July 2025.

That left too little time. On December 8, 2025, Mayor Robert Craft told the council there would be no festival in 2026. He first said organizers couldn't book the kind of acts the city required, and that the city wouldn't let them go back to the kind of acts Hangout had booked before. His written statement later put it more neutrally: the compressed timeline didn't give organizers enough runway. AEG told Billboard the decision was tied to Hangout Festival and the permitting approval timeline for the site. The extension itself tells organizers to treat the 2025 event as the benchmark for the audience they should attract, so the country-first format is now effectively written into the festival's permission to exist.

What 2027 Carries Forward

MusicRow reported the return on October 30, 2026, and the lineup followed on November 2. It is again "Morgan Wallen Presents," again produced by AEG Presents, and again on two stages, the Sand In My Boots Stage and the Dangerous Stage, with '98 Braves Park adding Whiskey Jam and second sets. Wallen said he wants new concepts on stage and a better experience for fans and artists. The bill keeps his 2025 formula of country with Southern rap and a few rock and electronic outliers, and it connects to almost every era of this beach: Girl Talk from the first Hangout, Kings of Leon from 2013, Kygo from 2019, Nelly and Koe Wetzel from the last Hangout, and Ella Langley and Juicy J from the first Sand in My Boots.

The day split, stage assignments and set times aren't out yet. We'll add them to the set times page and the schedule builder when the festival posts them. Until then, browse the full 2027 lineup, read who to see and the first-timer's guide, or check the FAQ for gates, shuttles and bag rules.

The History of Sand in My Boots