Burning Man at 40: the once anarchic desert festival faces a midlife crisis

The subversive bacchanal for San Francisco’s eccentric underground is ageing out amid an influx of the super-rich

Burning Man, the infamous arts festival in the Nevada desert, turned 40 this year, and it’s showing some distinct signs of middle age.

It’s not just the tech billionaires who show up to party, the chartered flights straight to the desert or the HBO documentary about behind-the-scenes power struggles. The tens of thousands of people who assemble each year to create a tent city in the wilderness appear to be growing older, and it doesn’t seem that they’re being replaced by as many younger “burners”, as festival participants are called.

People in their 20s used to make up nearly a third of the participants in this utopian experiment, in which volunteers build a new version of Black Rock City in the desert each year, party nonstop for a week and then burn much of the art they have created, including a massive effigy of the “Man.”

Since the festival paused for two years during the pandemic, the number of attenders in their 20s has dropped sharply, falling to only 10% in 2025, according to estimates from the Black Rock City census, an annual participant survey that has been conducted in different forms since 2002. Meanwhile, the share of attenders in their 40 and 50s grew to nearly 42% last year. While data for 2026 is not yet available, the “preliminary 2026 census data suggest a slightly younger age profile than in 2025”, the organization said.