HARD Summer Is Returning to Downtown Los Angeles

HARD Summer is returning to downtown Los Angeles. The longstanding electronic music festival will happen Aug. 5-6 at a site spread across the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, Exposition Park and BMO Stadium in Downtown Los Angeles.

The event will mark HARD Summer’s return to downtown after a 10-year absence. HARD has strong roots in downtown L.A., launching there in 2008 as an underground warehouse party from longstanding electronic events producer Gary Richards, then growing into downtown’s L.A. State Historic Park amidst the height of the EDM explosion, drawing huge crowds and headliners including Skrillex, deadmau5, Justice and many more.

As electronic music gained a bad reputation in Los Angeles and beyond amidst a flurry of drug-related deaths at electronic festivals including HARD, political red tape pushed events out of the city, with HARD relocating first to Whittier Narrows, then the Pomona Fairplex, then further into the Inland Empire at sites in Fontana and Bakersfield.

By this time, Richards had left HARD, ceding control of the company to Insomniac Events, which currently operates the festival in conjunction with its parent company, Live Nation.

Insomniac Events is also the producer of Electric Daisy Carnival, which itself has roots in downtown Los Angeles, with the first major iterations of EDC happening at the L.A. Memorial Coliseum. This location changed following the death of a 15-year-old girl at Electric Daisy Carnival at the Los Angeles Coliseum in 2010, and the indictment of founder-promoter Pasquale Rotella on felony charges in connection to the venue, sparking EDC’s move to Las Vegas, which has become its spiritual home over the last 12 years. (Rotella was cleared of all felony charges in 2016.)

“We are thrilled to host HARD Summer’s return to Los Angeles as part of our centennial anniversary celebration,” Joe Furin, general manager of the LA Coliseum, says in a statement. “As home to the most iconic events in the world, this festival is an exciting addition to our 100-year history.” 

The news indicates a thawing in the relationship between Insomniac and the Coliseum, with Insomniac also promoting the headlining show from Kx5 (Kaskade and deadmau5) that happened there Dec. 10. The show drew 46,000 attendees, making it the biggest ticketed global headliner dance event of 2022.