After months of mystery, Chicago's summer music festival season is beginning to come into focus with the announcement of Spring Awakening's lineup and Pitchfork Music Festival's prolonged mural reveal. But Open Air Chicago, the metal and heavy rock festival that has taken over Toyota Park for a weekend during the past two summers, has notably been missing from the conversation. Unfortunately, it looks like you'll have to wait at least another year for the event to make its return.
Over the weekend, Chicago Open Air updated its website and Facebook pages with the message, “Chicago Open Air will be taking a hiatus this year. See you in 2019.” Though the festival traditionally shares a weekend with Pitchfork, it's always operated as counter-programming to the hipster-friendly fest, booking acts like KISS, Korn, Rob Zombie and Slayer that attract an entirely different audience.
Though organizers haven't offered any clues as to why Chicago Open Air was forced to go on hiatus, it seems likely that the event simply wasn't able to lock down a compelling lineup of acts this summer. The nearby Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre is hosting Slayer, Avenged Sevenfold, Prophets of Rage, Five Finger Death Punch, Breaking Benjamin, Godsmack, Shinedown, Rob Zombie and Marilyn Manson throughout the summer—acts that would have been a good fit for Chicago Open Air (some of them were even at the festival last summer) but presumably opted to play an amphitheater show in lieu of a festival.
While you'll have to wait until 2019 to see if Chicago Open Air can rise from the ashes, hard rock fans can still look forward to Riot Fest, which landed headlining performances from the likes of Nine Inch Nails and Queens of the Stone Age last September.