Welcome to XP Dispatch — our monthly look ahead at the events, gatherings and cultural moments shaping the experiential industry. Each issue, we go deeper on three. We talk to the people building them, participating in them and watching them closely. Consider it your field briefing for the month ahead.
This month: a beloved music festival, a convention for superfans and a tennis major. On paper, they have nothing in common. But what you’ll see are three experiences that have expanded without losing the soul of what made them great.
Outside Lands is three days of music that expanded to wine, weed and weddings. D23 is a three-day fan fest sitting inside two full weeks of Disney programming across Anaheim. Nearly all of it, not shockingly, is Disney’s doing. And then there’s the US Open, which has stretched to 22 days by opening a genuinely free week at the front, plus plenty of ticketed add-ons to appeal to more types of tennis (and music and culinary and fashion) lovers.
Nobody here is selling a single experience anymore. They’re selling a window.
OUTSIDE LANDS
August 7–9, 2026 | Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, CA
Eighteen years in, Outside Lands sold out in six days, with a lineup that was cryptically revealed with clues, then decoded by San Francisco’s mayor, Daniel Lurie. (We smell clever marketing.)
Food, wine, cannabis and art have run alongside the music since the first year in the park. What’s changed is that the sidebars became the business. Wine Lands. Beer Lands. Cocktail Magic. Grass Lands. Artists In Residence. New for 2026 is McLaren Vintage, an entire secondhand-fashion market inside a music festival.
But our favorite is City Hall, the wedding program, now in year three. For $449, you can get hitched at the City Hall pop-up; for just shy of $16K, you get the Lands End main stage: officiant, photographer, first dance at the soundboard, a two-hour reception for twenty, a Just Married golf cart, four bottles of champagne and your name on the main-stage screens. A donation from every package goes to Lambda Legal.
The wedding program is the brainchild of Outside Lands producer Brynn Hardcastle, who got married at a festival herself. “It was absolutely wonderful,” she told the SF Examiner. “I wanted to give the Outside Lands community the opportunity to experience that.”
About twenty ceremonies a year does not move a festival P&L that much. But a week of “couple gets married at Outside Lands” coverage beats most media buys. And it buys the festival a place in someone’s life story (not just their camera roll).
The big picture number far outweighs any single stunt. In 2025, Outside Lands generated $97.5 million in economic activity across the Bay Area, $71.8 million of it landing directly in San Francisco, per the Bay Area Council Economic Institute — plus 24,795 hotel room nights and 485 full-time-equivalent jobs. Since 2008 the festival has put $49 million into San Francisco Rec & Parks.
“As our city continues to rise, events like these help drive tourism, create jobs and remind people why San Francisco remains one of the greatest cities in the world,” their unofficial brand ambassador Mayor Lurie said.
D23
August 14–16, 2026 | Anaheim Convention Center and Honda Center, Anaheim, CA
Bob Iger launched D23 in 2009 as a single Anaheim convention. It has run every year since and, with runs in Japan and Brazil already under its belt, the fan fest has its first Singapore edition set for 2027. Like Comic-Con and WWDC, it’s where the reveals live: movie announcements, Marvel and Star Wars footage, park expansions, Disney Cruise Line news — plus the Disney Legends induction, the company’s highest honor. This year, there are eleven honorees, Iger among them, alongside Dwayne Johnson, Anne Hathaway, the Jonas Brothers and Lin-Manuel Miranda, with Ryan Seacrest hosting at the Honda Center on the 16th.
Official programming runs for three days. The city of Anaheim gets two weeks. And here’s the part worth noting: almost none of it is free, and almost all of it is Disney’s doing.
A Walt Disney Archives exhibit opens at the Muzeo on the 8th and costs $10. To attend D23 Night at Angel Stadium on the 12th, with 23,000 Mickey bobbleheads on the line, you’ll need an Angels ticket. And on the 13th, D23 Day at Disneyland Resort requires park admission. Want the Disney Legends Cavalcade down Main Street and what’s being billed as the largest gathering of Disney Princess talent ever assembled across the esplanade at California Adventure? You’ll need a Park Hopper, because they’re in different parks.
Sixteen Downtown Disney businesses are running D23 offers, but those are discounts, not comps: 10% at most, 23% at a couple and free bowling with a $25 minimum. In the entire two weeks, nearly everything requires a membership — except for D23 Night at Bottle Logic Brewing and World Taste, a special D23 Night at the Anaheim Packing District. But try doing either of those things without opening your wallet.
Disney didn't wait for a fringe takeover. It built one.
Every tentpole has a fringe — ancillary programming that swarms a big event, feeds off its gravity, and answers to nobody who runs it. Art Basel Miami Beach has one. So do SXSW, Cannes Lions and Coachella. A fringe is normally something that happens to you. Disney didn't wait for a fringe takeover. It built one: three days for superfans becomes two weeks across a city, and the center of gravity and everything in its orbit answer to the same company.
That’s by design, according to Kyle Morris of NMR, who worked with Disney on D23 for the first time this year. “The fan fest is always going to be strictly what the name says,” he told us. “It’s the retention of fans. It’s creating the love affair between Disney and their fans. They do it because they realize the stickiness that it creates.”
Inside, the show floor is the largest in D23’s history — Marvel, Lucasfilm, a combined Pixar and Walt Disney Animation space, the Archives’ Uncrated exhibit, and full activations from Chevrolet, Heinz, Honda and M&M’S. More than 50 panels run across the weekend.
The convention sells badges. The window sells belonging. Only one of those has a capacity limit.
US OPEN
August 23–September 13, 2026 | USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, Flushing Meadows, NY
The 2026 US Open runs 22 days, what the USTA calls the most competition days in the tournament’s near-150-year history. The singles draws don’t start until August 30. Everything before that is Fan Week. This year promises to be the most built-out version yet. And yes, it’s free.
Seven glorious days of grounds access. Qualifying courts. Practice courts. Arthur Ashe Kids' Day on the 23rd, which now opens the week instead of closing it, with members of the Savannah Bananas making their Kids' Day debut. A Silent Disco is back for a second year. The Block Party with D-Nice. Daily programming on the Fountain Plaza Stage that runs from Bollywood dance to Drag Queen Family Storytime. And a Marvel-drawn Spider-Man comic — six covers, one for each borough plus a main.
Of course, not everything is free. Hot dogs at the highly coveted (and spendy) Food Village will run you about $20. Keep that wallet out for the ticketed stuff too: Roger Federer & Andy Roddick back in Arthur Ashe on the 25th, along with Andre Agassi and John McEnroe. Stars of the Open on the 27th, from $30 — despite the name, a rising-stars card: João Fonseca, Alexandra Eala, Learner Tien, Iva Jovic. And two days before Fan Week even starts, The Lumineers play Louis Armstrong Stadium, presented by the US Open.
The clearest expression of the model is August 25. The Mixed Doubles matchup — overhauled in 2025, dragged out of its low-key Sunday slot and into Fan Week, opened to singles stars — this year Aryna Sabalenka with Novak Djokovic, Iga Świątek with Casper Ruud, Elena Rybakina with Taylor Fritz — plays its opening rounds that day. Some stadiums are free. Some ticketed.
The 2025 overhaul is what earned the right to expand. It put $1 million on the line for the winners and drew 78,000 fans across two days, sold out Arthur Ashe both nights, and set a single-day record of 12.8 million views on the US Open's YouTube channel. Sports Business Journal named it Breakthrough of the Year.
New this year, the free Fan Week comes with a turnstile. Everyone 18+ needs a Fan Access Pass to enter, and last year's doesn't carry over. It costs nothing, but it also means the USTA now knows exactly who walked through the gate.
The US Open has a ticket-price problem.
The lazy read is that a free week is lead gen for future ticket buyers. That's not only what it's about: the U.S. Open has a ticket-price problem, and Fan Week is how it lets every kind of fan enjoy the sport — and the big names that come with it — anyway.
"Fan Week being free and accessible for everyone is an investment in growing the game," said Nicole Kankam, managing director of professional tennis marketing and entertainment at the USTA. "We want you to leave having had an experience that inspires you to keep watching, pick up a racquet for the first time or keep playing a sport that's been proven to add nearly 10 years to your life."
The USTA is candid that the mission and the math point in the same direction. It wants 35 million Americans playing by 2035, up from 27.3 million last year, and Kankam has called Fan Week the pipeline that gets them there. Eight of the tournament's 22 days cost nothing to attend — all of Fan Week, plus "Open for All Day" on September 10.
That's the design. The week is free. Some of the Mixed Doubles, the Lumineers, the merch and the Honey Deuces are not. But maybe you'll start taking up tennis!?
THE SIGN-OFF
Three orgs, three different offerings, one shared conclusion. The event is no longer the product. The window of fueling the fandom is. Outside Lands added revenue lines that don’t rely on who’s headlining. Disney formed its own fringe events, turning three days in a convention center into two weeks across a city. The US Open gave away a week on principle, then expanded by listening to what fans wanted, offering up a variety of experiences for a variety of audience profiles.
See you in the next Dispatch. Until then, we’ll be on the ground, in the rooms, on slack and in the group chats.
