Ultra Music Festival (often abbreviated as UMF) is an annual outdoor electronic music festival that takes place during March in Miami, Florida, United States.[1] The festival was founded in 1999 by Russell Faibisch and Alex Omesand is named after the 1997 Depeche Mode album, Ultra.
It was first held on Miami Beach, but besides a tenure at Bicentennial Park, and briefly being held at Virginia Key in 2019, it has primarily been held at Bayfront Park in downtown Miami. It was a one-day festival from 1999 to 2006.
Since 2011, Ultra has taken place across three days (Friday through Sunday) during the month of March. In 2012, a record attendance of 155,000 people attended the festival. In 2013, the festival took place across two consecutive weekends to celebrate its 15th anniversary, with a combined attendance of 330,000 people. In 2014, the festival returned to its original single-weekend format, selling out pre-sale tickets in under five minutes. The city of Miami has estimated that since 2012, Ultra has “generated approximately $995 million of economic impact”, with $168 million in 2018 alone.
Alongside the flagship event in Miami, Ultra has spawned a larger series of international franchises under the blanket branding Ultra Worldwide, which have included locations such as South Africa, South Korea, Singapore, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, and others.