TomorrowWorld sold 150,000 tickets — then rain stranded fans and killed day three

TomorrowWorld brought the Belgian mega-festival Tomorrowland's brand and production to an 8,000-acre farm outside Atlanta, Georgia, run by Dutch promoter ID&T under its US parent SFX Entertainment. The first two editions, in 2013 and 2014, each drew roughly 140,000–150,000 attendees over three days without major incident, building the event into one of the largest EDM festivals in North America.

The 2015 edition, September 25–27, sold a similar 150,000 tickets. Scattered rain over the weekend turned the unpaved festival grounds into what attendees described as a mud pit. On Saturday, organizers restricted the shuttle buses that were the primary way non-camping attendees got back to Atlanta, stranding thousands on site overnight without adequate food, water or shelter; some hiked miles down highways in the dark, others paid surge-priced rideshares to escape.

Sunday, the festival's third day, was cancelled outright for everyone except campers already on site — the majority of ticket holders, who had paid for a full three-day pass, got two. Some attendees tried to force their way past gates. The backlash went viral through 2015. SFX Entertainment, already financially strained, filed for bankruptcy on February 2, 2016, and on March 2, 2016, TomorrowWorld's US edition was cancelled for good, citing both the bankruptcy and the prior year's fallout. It has not returned since.