Approximately 900 people joined a town hall meeting hosted by Burning Man Project on Saturday (Feb. 1) with the organization’s CEO Marian Goodell, along with other staffers, making myriad announcements regarding the 2025 event, including information regarding a tiered ticketing system with new prices.
The town hall happened after months of fundraising efforts by Burning Man Project — the nonprofit behind the annual gathering in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert and other Burning Man-related initiatives –after it reported a $10 million deficit due, as Goodell explained to Billboard in November, 2024 tickets not selling as forecasted.
The financial issue was compounded when Burning Man 2024 failed to sell out for the first time in many years. In November, Goodell said all ticket tiers saw decreased sales in 2024 and estimated that attendance was down by roughly 4,000. As such, in the latter part of 2024, Burning Man spent months trying to raise $20 million (with 2024’s $10 million deficit added to $10 million the organization typically raises every year) through a subscription program that encouraged Burners from around the world to make monthly donations to Burning Man Project.
In the Saturday meeting, Goodell noted that the organization did not meet this fundraising goal, although she did not announce how much money was raised. (Goodell did note that a December campaign to raise $3 million was a success, and elaborated on the organization’s financial picture in a recent blog post.) She added that Burning Man Project “did manage to reduce our internal spending and budget by 9%… and will continue to tightly manage operating expenses and capital expenses across the organization.”
Goodell and the team then unveiled a revamped ticketing program, with new and updated price tiers. Tickets for Burning Man 2025 will start at $550, with prices scaling up from there — $650, $750 and $950m and more.
Tickets will be sold in three separate public sales, with the first happening on Feb. 12. Tickets in this sale (dubbed the “Today Sale”) will be $550, $650, $750, $950, $1,500, and $3,000, plus applicable taxes and fees. Registration for this sale opens on Monday (Feb. 3), with the sale offering a limited number of tickets available at each price. The Burning Man site notes that “$550 and $650 tickets are expected to sell quickly.” The meeting did not address how many tickets will be available at each price point.
Since 2022, Burning Man’s main sale tickets cost $575, an increase from $475 in 2019. (Burning Man didn’t officially happen in 2020 or 2021 due to the pandemic.) Therefore, many 2025 main sale tickets will be sold at a higher price than in previous years. In the meeting, Goodell emphasized that making new tiers (with ticket tiers previously offering no tickets between $550 and $1,500) provides more pricing options than ever before and “helps keep ticket prices affordable”
Beyond this first sale, the annual Steward’s Sale will happen on March 5, with these tickets going to camps, art installations, art cars, and groups supporting organizational initiatives having access to attending the event. The Stewards Sale has its own ticket price allotments reserved unrelated to other ticket sales.
Another ticket sale (dubbed the “Tomorrow Sale”) will happen at to be determined date and include ticket tiers based on ticketing availability following the “Today Sale.” A final sale (the annual “OMG sale”) will happen in July and offer any remaining tickets across all the price points.
Meanwhile, two new programs — the “Renaissance Program” and “Resilience Program” — will debut with the goal of bringing networks and groups to Black Rock City and brings people affected by natural disasters and geographical conflict, respectively. More information regarding these programs will be announced in the coming weeks and months.
Goodell alluded to backlash over the recent fundraising campaign among factions of the global Burning Man community, saying that “with the event selling out every year, we [previously] didn’t need to explain that tickets do not cover the event cost and that philanthropy is needed, but the game has changed, and we should have brought you along better on this journey and we appreciate you sticking with us… We are learning and improving, reducing bureaucracy and red tape, and we hope that you see and feel this in how you engage with us and one another.”
The meeting featured presentations from several members from Burning Man Project, with operations director Charlie Dolman explaining several new processes, including an expedited process to acquire the vehicle passes that allow Burners to drive through the event. Burning Man will also issue new “decommodification guidelines” meant to, as Dolman said, address “cultural issues,” along with a more organized ingress and egress system. (In previous years it’s taken some attendees roughly 12 hours to leave the event.)
“Over the last last few months we’ve gotten a lot of feedback from a lot of people, and I just want to say that we’ve heard you, and honestly even when it’s been uncomfortable we’ve kept our eyes and ears open. We want that feedback,” Dolman said, continuing that “in places we’ve overcomplicated things and we’ve made things too bureaucratic maybe, and that’s no fun. That has all been done with good intention… but also it became not fun, so we needed to course correct.”
Later in the presentation, Goodell also noted a new attempt to push back on costs related to the Bureau of Land Management, with fees from the organization typically coming in at $8 million. “I think we’re going to see some improvements in costs with the BLM,” she disclosed.
