Sundance’s final Utah curtain call: Park City says goodbye as festival heads to Boulder

Snow is falling again on Park City’s Main Street, the neon festival banners are up, and the lines outside the Eccles Theater snake around the block. On the surface, the Sundance Film Festival looks much as it has for decades.

This time, the crowds know they are saying goodbye.

The 2026 edition of Sundance, running Jan. 22 through Feb. 1 in Park City and Salt Lake City, is the last that will be held in Utah after more than 40 years. It is also the first since founder Robert Redford died in September at his home in the mountains he helped turn into the unofficial capital of American independent film.

When the festival’s lights go down here for the final time, Sundance will turn its focus 500 miles east to Boulder, Colorado, which is set to become its new permanent home in January 2027.

The farewell in Park City gives the festival a double burden: closing an era that reshaped the movie business while signaling what comes next in a new city and a changed industry.

A festival built around memory

Sundance organizers have leaned into the moment.

Midway through the festival, a special Park City Legacy program will take over screens from Jan. 27 to 30, showcasing restored or archival prints of films that became synonymous with the festival’s rise. The lineup includes titles such as Little Miss Sunshine, Half Nelson, Mysterious Skin, House Party and Barbara Kopple’s documentary American Dream, along with a restored print of the original Saw and Lynn Shelton’s Humpday.

Paired with the films are retrospective shorts and onstage conversations with filmmakers and cast members, meant to trace a line from the festival’s scrappy early days to its status as a global launchpad for independent cinema.

Running alongside the legacy screenings are tributes to Redford, who founded the Sundance Institute in 1981 to support filmmakers outside the studio system and later developed the festival in Park City as a showcase for that work.

Festival events this year include a program titled “Celebrating Sundance Institute: A Tribute to Founder Robert Redford,” a public celebration in Salt Lake City and the long‑running directors brunch at Sundance Mountain Resort, framed explicitly as a gathering in his honor. A commemorative screening of Downhill Racer, Redford’s 1969 passion project about an outsider ski racer, is billed as a nod to the film that helped inspire his push into independent production.

Redford died Sept. 16 at age 89. In obituaries, colleagues recalled him both as a defining screen actor of the 1970s and as what one called a “patron saint” of American independent film. His death, followed months later by the Park City farewell, has turned the 2026 festival into a memorial of sorts for the Utah chapter he championed.

At the same time, the lineup reflects continuity rather than nostalgia alone. This year’s slate mixes star‑driven premieres and risk‑taking indie fare, including work involving Natalie Portman, Olivia Wilde, Chris Pine, Charli XCX, Gregg Araki and Jay Duplass. The documentary program once again spans celebrity subjects and global political issues—titles that often ricochet from Sundance into awards season and advocacy circles.

How Sundance outgrew its ski‑town home

For four decades, “going to Park City in January” has been an annual ritual for filmmakers, critics and buyers, and a distinct part of Sundance’s identity. The small former mining town transformed itself into a hub for film executives in winter, then returned to ski and tourism business the rest of the year.

Behind the scenes, festival leaders and local officials say the arrangement has grown strained.

The festival long ago expanded beyond the scale Park City was built to handle. Theater and event capacity has been a recurring challenge, and steep increases in housing and lodging costs have made it difficult for staff, volunteers and many independent filmmakers to afford a week and a half in town.

Economic impact studies illustrate why both sides worked for years to keep the festival in Utah. In 2018, Sundance brought an estimated $191.6 million in overall economic activity to the state, including more than $19 million in state and local tax revenue and more than 3,300 jobs tied to the event. A 2019 report put the impact at $182.5 million and about 3,000 jobs. State officials say the 2024 festival generated around $132 million in economic activity, 1,730 jobs and nearly $70 million in wages, much of it linked to out‑of‑state visitors during a slower stretch of the ski season.

Those figures helped make Sundance one of Utah’s most visible international calling cards. They are also part of what attracted Colorado.

Boulder’s pitch: space, students and “values”

On March 27, 2025, the Sundance Institute’s board announced that Boulder would become the festival’s new home beginning in 2027, describing the move as the start of “a bold, new journey.”

Acting CEO Amanda Kelso said at the time that Boulder offered a rare combination of “art town, tech town, mountain town and college town,” with a downtown core and university campus that could host premieres, panels and industry meetings in closer proximity than Park City allowed.

Eugene Hernandez, director of the film festival, framed the decision as a way to continue a decades‑long journey in a place that could better accommodate modern Sundance, citing Boulder’s theaters, university venues and capacity to welcome tens of thousands of visitors each January.

Sundance officials also said their site search centered on what they described as “ethos and equity values,” a phrase that has taken on outsized significance in the months since.

The move came as Utah lawmakers debated legislation restricting which flags—including LGBTQ pride flags—could be flown on government and school buildings. The bill prompted protests from some students and educators. Park City Mayor Nann Worel later suggested that such measures and the broader tone of state politics may have complicated Utah’s bid to keep the festival, though Sundance has said the decision was not driven by a single law or issue.

Colorado leaders seized on the contrast. Gov. Jared Polis, one of the country’s most prominent openly gay elected officials, welcomed the news, calling film and the arts “a key economic driver, job creator, and important contributor to our thriving culture” and predicting benefits for small businesses across the state. Boulder officials emphasized the city’s existing arts scene and its reputation as socially progressive.

The state also put a concrete offer on the table. Colorado’s Office of Economic Development and International Trade has approved a package of tax incentives worth up to $34 million over 10 years to secure the festival, based on projected increases in visitor spending, jobs and media exposure.

Utah’s loss, Colorado’s test

Utah officials expressed disappointment and, in some cases, anger as the relocation became public.

Gov. Spencer Cox said Sundance would “come to regret leaving Utah” and argued that the state had presented a “highly competitive package” to retain the festival. He and other state leaders have talked about supporting a new, homegrown independent film festival in the years after Sundance departs, though concrete plans have not been announced.

For Park City and surrounding communities, the end of Sundance brings uncertainty. Restaurants, hotels, transportation companies and seasonal workers who built business models around the January influx will have to adjust. The loss comes as mountain towns across the West grapple with housing shortages, the rising cost of living and questions about the long‑term stability of ski seasons in a warming climate.

In Boulder, the prospect of hosting Sundance has been greeted as both an opportunity and a stress test. The city, home to about 100,000 people and the flagship campus of the University of Colorado, already ranks among the country’s more expensive housing markets. Local officials say they are working with the university and business community on transportation, venue usage and housing strategies to avoid repeating some of Park City’s strains.

University of Colorado Boulder Chancellor Justin Schwartz has said the festival will give students direct exposure to filmmakers and actors and deepen the region’s arts ecosystem, while state economic officials portray Sundance as a centerpiece in efforts to brand Colorado as a film and creative‑industries hub alongside the long‑running Telluride Film Festival.

New leadership for a new chapter

Institutional change at Sundance is arriving alongside the geographic shift.

The institute has named veteran film executive David Linde as its next CEO, effective Feb. 17, immediately after the Park City farewell. Linde previously co‑founded Focus Features, a specialty division known for shepherding independent and international films to mainstream awards, and later led Participant, the company behind Oscar winners such as Spotlight and Green Book.

In his new role, Linde will oversee not only the Boulder transition but also Sundance’s year‑round labs, fellowships and artist support programs, which remain central to the institute’s mission even as the festival draws the bulk of public attention.

The move to Colorado also unfolds in a different marketplace than the one Redford confronted in 1981. Streamers including Netflix, Amazon and Apple now dominate distribution deals at festivals, and the line between studio and “independent” work has blurred. How Sundance defines and supports independence in that environment—and whether a college‑town setting encourages more experimentation in formats such as virtual reality and interactive media—are open questions that will not be answered in Park City’s final year.

An era ends, another begins

Redford, who attended the University of Colorado in Boulder as a young man, endorsed the relocation before his death. In a statement backing the decision, he expressed “sincere gratitude” to Park City and Utah and added that “change is inevitable, we must always evolve and grow.”

As audiences file into legacy screenings this week and festival staff prepare for the last closing‑night ceremony in Utah, that sentiment hangs over the proceedings.

The snow, altitude and streets that defined Sundance’s image will soon be different. The institution’s influence—as a platform for new voices, a marketplace for distributors and a magnet for cultural and political debates—will be tested in a new setting.

For now, the projectors still whir in Park City. When they stop on Feb. 1, they will mark not just the end of this year’s festival, but the close of a chapter in American film that began when Redford first invited independent filmmakers to a small mountain town and asked the world to follow.