Burning Man 2027: Dates, Tickets & Black Rock City Survival Guide

Burning Man is a week-long, participant-built city that rises in Nevada's Black Rock Desert every year around Labor Day and vanishes without a trace when it's over. The 2027 edition runs August 29 to September 6 under the theme Spellbound, and for that week Black Rock City becomes one of the largest temporary populations in Nevada — built entirely on principles of radical self-reliance, gifting, and leaving no trace behind.

The event's origins are considerably smaller and more local than its current scale suggests. In 1986, Larry Harvey and Jerry James, two members of the San Francisco arts community, burned an eight-foot wooden effigy of a man on the city's Baker Beach to mark the summer solstice — an event witnessed by about twenty people. Harvey and James returned to the same beach for the next several years with progressively taller effigies, until 1990, when police intervened at the last minute and refused to allow a 40-foot effigy to be set ablaze. The event relocated that year to Nevada's Black Rock Desert, where it has remained ever since — and once it moved to the desert, it never returned to the beach or to the solstice, adopting instead the Labor Day weekend timing it still keeps today.

That relocation from a San Francisco beach bonfire to a week-long desert city is also where Burning Man's core principles took shape — radical self-reliance (nothing is sold on-site apart from ice and coffee, so participants bring everything they need), a gifting economy in place of commerce, and 'leave no trace,' a strict standard requiring the entire temporary city to be cleared from the desert floor after the event, down to individual pieces of litter, referred to within the community as MOOP (Matter Out of Place).

Tickets & Getting In

How Much Does a Trip Cost?

Burning Man's costs run higher than a typical festival because the ticket price is only the starting point — radical self-reliance means every participant is also budgeting for a week of self-supplied survival gear, food and water.

Getting There & Around

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

What are the 2027 Burning Man dates?

August 29 to September 6, 2027, in the Black Rock Desert, Nevada, timed around the Labor Day holiday.

Can I just buy food and water when I get there?

No — Burning Man sells nothing on-site apart from ice and coffee. Participants are required to bring all their own food, water and supplies for the full week, a principle the community calls radical self-reliance.

Why did Burning Man move from a San Francisco beach to the Nevada desert?

In 1990, police stopped the annual Baker Beach effigy burn at the last minute; organizers relocated the event to the Black Rock Desert that same year, and it has been held there every year since, shifting from the summer solstice to the Labor Day period it now keeps.