MANKATO — RibFest is going to be shorter, smaller, less ribby and more retro this summer.
Mankato’s primary summertime festival for nearly three decades, the early August event has seen a decline in attendance in recent years. With construction planned for Riverfront Park’s amphitheater later this summer, city leaders wondered late last year if it was time to reassess RibFest. The event’s organizers — civic center co-directors Eric Jones and Brian Sather — developed a proposal in the months that followed and delivered it at a council work session Monday night.
“Bring it back to its roots, its humble beginnings,” Jones said, summarizing the suggested changes.
The event will be half as long, from lunchtime Friday through Saturday night, Aug. 7-8, rather than a Thursday-to-Sunday four-day festival. It will feature local or regional bands rather than national headliners. It will offer fewer touring barbecue cooks and more BBQ-based food trucks. And it will return to downtown, primarily on the street between the civic center and the Intergovernmental Center, revising its original “Hickory Street RibFest” name and logo.
“Use the Grand Lawn in front of the IGC, the entire block of Hickory Street and potentially the parking lot between the IGC and US Bank near the Brett’s building,” the written proposal suggested. “This footprint would be almost the exact same as it was from 1998-2009.”
After moving to the just-opened Riverfront Park in 2010, RibFest grew into a major summer event for south-central Minnesota. Nationally known musical groups were featured, albeit ones that were sometimes past their heyday, and attendance soared — exceeding 20,000 in 2012 and 2013. It was still close to that level in 2018 and 2019, but the numbers declined in the years since the COVID-19 pandemic canceled the 2020 event. In recent years, attendance has generally ranged from 11,000 to 13,000, including just 11,541 last year.
But the impetus for returning to a smaller downtown event in 2026 came about mainly because of construction. A $3.1 million improvement project at Riverfront Park’s amphitheater was approved by the council late last year. The wide-ranging upgrades — a new stage, a stage roof structure, the addition of some permanent seating and a storage building — will require shutting down the venue from the beginning of August until June 1, 2027.
On Monday night, council members supported the plans for a scaled-back, relocated RibFest this year. And, although the amphitheater will once again be available in 2027, the discussion made clear that the festival won’t necessarily be headed back there.
“We’ve talked for years about using this space more,” Jones said, pointing to the Grand Lawn outside the council’s meeting room.
The spot couldn’t host a crowd of 20,000 attendees, but RibFest could grow somewhat to a second stage in the adjacent parking lot. And there’s the potential of hosting two or three smaller events each summer downtown rather than a single major festival.
Mayor Najwa Massad and Council members Jessica Hatanpa and Kevin Mettler talked about how the downtown location offers the potential to incorporate more hospitality businesses into the event.
“I want the Blue Bricks and the Pub 500s and all of those businesses to benefit,” Hatanpa said.
Mettler tossed out the idea of having two nights of RibFest along Hickory Street and adding a third night when Front Street, with its multiple bars and restaurants, would be closed off for street concerts.
While that’s a concept for the future, Sather said a second stage in the parking lot southeast of the Grand Lawn could potentially be added this year — one with controlled access, beer sales and a small admission charge.
“If we have the right band and the right price, that makes sense,” he said.
The goal for 2026 will be to keep costs at a minimum for attendees, other than any food and drinks they choose to purchase. The culinary offerings will be from “BBQ-based food trucks and vendors from around the state of Minnesota,” according to the memo from Jones and Sather. “Staff have had well-received conversations with multiple local food trucks when asking for feedback on the concept and confirming if there would be availability this late in their season’s schedule.”
Music would be from “local and regional bands, as it was in the beginning.”
Jones, although he appeared to cringe at the idea, said the Hickory Street RibFest of 2026 will also be bringing back the “classic original logo” from 1998, which he described as “pigs eating pigs.”
Although organizers aren’t ruling out one or more of the traditional touring ribbers returning to Mankato, those vendors will be more difficult to attract because Mystic Lake is moving its Great Midwest Ribfest from late July to June. Previously, that event was held just a week prior to the one in Riverfront Park, making it easy to persuade the ribbers to drive straight from Prior Lake to Mankato.
For area residents making a nostalgic return to a Hickory Street RibFest in downtown Mankato, the more varied food truck offerings won’t be the only difference from what they found a quarter-century ago. The area in front of the Intergovernmental Center has become quite a bit greener and more shaded following improvements in 2015 and 2016 that brought more landscaping, tree plantings, wider sidewalks, public art and benches.
The most significant change was the transformation of a parking lot between the government offices and the civic center into the Grand Lawn, with grass and trees replacing pavement. A small stage on the northwestern side of the lawn features musical groups each summer at free “Songs on the Lawn” concerts.
As for whether RibFest (or its future successor) stays downtown or returns to Riverfront Park, that question will be answered sometime after Aug. 7-8.
“I think we’ll learn a lot this summer,” Sather said. “I don’t want to commit to 2027 until we see what happens this summer.”