Latin music festivals in the U.S. have had a rough run lately. In the past two years alone, Bésame Mucho scrapped its November 2024 L.A. edition with Shakira as headliner, Migo Fest in New York was called off last October before it got underway, and La Onda in Napa abruptly canceled two weeks after unveiling a lineup led by J Balvin, Maná and Christian Nodal.

The pressures on the individual festivals varied — from visa issues and broader political concerns to lineup instability, touring competition, soft ticket sales and the rising cost of mounting a festival — but together they underscored how difficult it has become to build a durable, exclusively Latin festival business in the U.S.

Sueños, by contrast, has kept expanding. Now in its fifth year in Chicago’s Grant Park, the festival has become a fixture on the city’s summer calendar while continuing to book top-tier Latin talent. That staying power is especially notable at a moment when the Latin music festival market appears both bigger and more fragile than it did just a few years ago.

Not every festival offered a full explanation for why it pulled the plug. But taken together, the recent cancellations have highlighted just how shaky the Latin festival business can be, even as demand for the genre remains strong. Billboard separately reported last September on visa issues as a growing concern for artists and the companies that work with them.

In a conversation with Billboard, Sueños and La Familia Presenta co-founders Aaron Ampudia and Chris Den Uijl spoke about what has allowed the Sueños festival to keep growing, from deep ties to its audience to city-specific lineup curation to the importance of consistency when the broader market gets tougher.

At this point, Sueños is part of Chicago’s summer calendar. When did it start to feel real that this had become a fixture, not just a new festival?

Chris Den Uijl: What’s amazing is that it’s kind of the official kickoff of summer this weekend [in the city], and to be able to tap into that energy gives us a really nice foundation to build off of. It also gives us a roadmap, because it’s our first big festival of the year as well.

Sueños has built a reputation for landing major names — from Shakira to Fuerza Regida, J Balvin and Kali Uchis. How do you decide when a headliner is worth the investment?

Den Uijl: There are a couple different ways we look at it. There’s the hard-ticket data, the streaming data, all of those metrics. But there’s also that community touch. We always have our dream lineups and we’re constantly trying to create them, but sometimes artists have different plans.

A big part of what we love doing is finding artists earlier in their cycle — the acts that are playing at 2 p.m. one year and could become headliners later. We want to be part of that growth. And what we’ve learned is that the timeline from being a developing artist to being a headliner is shrinking fast. So for us, it’s about staying closely connected to the community and to the leaders in the Latin space, so we always have our eyes and ears to the ground.

Over the last two years, we’ve seen cancellations of other Latin music festivals, including Bésame Mucho, Migo Fest and La Onda. What has allowed Sueños to keep growing when others have struggled to hold on?

Aaron Ampudia: Take it back to 2018 — we’ve been in the culture since before [its mainstream explosion]. We knew the culture wanted this. That’s why we launched Baja Beach Fest [in Rosarito, Mexico, in 2018]. Then we saw a really big gap in the United States that didn’t have anything, and that’s when we launched Sueños.

A lot of festivals or parties come together, but maybe they didn’t know the culture that well. Maybe they didn’t know what fans wanted. I’m Mexican American, and I feel like I know exactly what fans want to drink, want to eat, what they want to listen to, how they want to see it, what brands they like and what brands they don’t like. That’s a competitive advantage for us. And we got a head start because we were there from the beginning with a lot of these artists and with the audience too.

Den Uijl: It’s getting harder and harder every day to launch something new. The thing we really give credit to our team and our partners for is our connection to the community and our understanding of how the music is evolving, how a brand identifies with its audience and how the audience identifies with the brand.

Those are the foundational pillars that create stability when things are tough. And things were not easier for us at Baja or Sueños or [Coca-Cola] Flow Fest — the hardships that some of these other festivals had, we had too. The difference is the consistency we bring when it comes to lineup programming, communication and community. When things get a little tough, we all struggle together. When things get great, we’re all together. But our commitment is to win the war, not the fight.

When you look at those cancellations, what do you think people underestimate about how hard it is to build a durable Latin festival business in the U.S.?

Ampudia: People underestimate how much cultural fluency matters. This isn’t just about putting a bunch of Latin artists on a poster. You have to understand the fan base in a real way — how they want to experience the day, what kind of food and drink feels authentic, what brands make sense in the space, how people move through the grounds, what they respond to emotionally. If you don’t know that audience deeply, it’s very hard to build something that lasts.

What has mattered most to Sueños’ staying power: booking strategy, operational discipline, the Chicago market — or the broader La Familia Presenta playbook behind it?

Den Uijl: It’s all of those things working together. We’ve learned over time that there is not one shoe that fits all when it comes to programming music. Every market has its own styles, and that has a lot to do with where different Latino populations live in each city.

In Mexico City, for example, you have one mix. In Baja, you have another. In Chicago, you see a lot of Puerto Rican, Venezuelan and Colombian influence alongside Mexican audiences. One artist could be a headliner in one city and sit in the middle of the lineup in another. The exciting part is being able to curate each festival specifically for the people in that city. If not, we’d just have the exact same lineup at every festival.

What have you done in recent years to make the business more resilient?

Ampudia: We’ve learned a lot over the past five years, especially around how the community wants to interact with the festival. A perfect example is the La Plaza stage. We introduced it in 2025 with a couple of local bands, and the response was massive. So this year we really doubled down and booked more local acts to give them an opportunity to showcase at Sueños and hopefully help them as they start their careers.

To Chris’ point, maybe one or two years from now they could be on the main stage. So for us, listening to the community and trusting the team is the perfect combination.

Den Uijl: Especially in the U.S. right now, it’s important to create a safe space where people can celebrate their culture and feel proud of who they are. That’s a big mission for us. We want the festival to feel like a stable, welcoming experience for the community, and that becomes part of the long-term value too.

Is the biggest pressure point right now artist costs, routing, visas, consumer demand — or something else?

Den Uijl: Travel has always been, and will continue to be, a road bump for all artists. I think for the Latino audience, and for Latin artists especially, it’s become a bigger road bump in the last few years. For us, communication, planning, understanding all the artists we have and doing a risk assessment on what that looks like — those things really anchor us in being able to book a lineup and feel confident that artists are going to show up.

Every festival deals with that, and some festivals get more of it than others. We did have a couple artists who weren’t able to come this year, but we also had other artists step in and the community was excited to have them.

Looking ahead, what does smart growth look like for Sueños?

Ampudia: It’s about following the path that we’re already seeing — a lot of community engagement, figuring out the next headliners we’re already working on for 2027 and 2028, and continuing to improve the fan experience. That’s what’s going to keep us on a steady growth path.

Den Uijl: At the end of the day, we’re curators for the community. We’re supposed to put together the perfect lineup and give people the artists they want, but it’s also important to remind people that artists have their own plans. Sometimes they have date conflicts, sometimes they want to do a hard-ticket show.

Where we see our value is in being able to look at the trends, understand what’s going to be hot and build something that continues to grow the festival. People are coming for the food, the dancing, the culture — but they’re also coming because they want to see their favorite artists.

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