RISE Festival Ignites the Mojave With Sky Lanterns, Superstars and Spiritual Resilience

Celebrating a decade of transformative festivals, RISE’s organizers overcame sandstorms and setbacks to deliver their most powerful edition yet.

When tens of thousands descend on a remote desert armed with lanterns, dancing shoes and dreams, anything can happen. And at RISE Festival 2025, everything did.

For a decade, RISE has been more of a ritual than a music festival. Each year, attendees converge on Jean Dry Lake Bed, about 20 miles south of the Las Vegas strip, to take part in what organizers call the world’s largest sky lantern ceremony.

This year’s edition widened the frame. Alongside its traditional release of illuminated lanterns came a full-scale music lineup spanning dance and alternative acts, a sign of the event’s evolution from spiritual gathering to cultural touchpoint.

The expansion arrived with growing pains. High winds on Friday grounded the opening-night lantern launch and delayed entry by hours. The decision, rare for a festival so defined by its ceremony, left many stranded in long shuttle lines and exposed to the kind of conditions only the Mojave can deliver.

Food shortages followed, and the night unfolded as a test more than a celebration. Still, the music played on as Emmit Fenn performed through the storm with goggles on loan from a fan, and RÜFÜS DU SOL closed out the evening to a crowd united mostly by endurance.

On Saturday, the desert exhaled. The winds calmed, and as the sun dipped behind the hills, a harvest moon emerged to light the stage for the weekend’s centerpiece. As evening fell, the long-awaited lantern release finally happened. Tens of thousands of glowing orbs, each bearing handwritten hopes, rose in unison from the Compass Stage.

The minutes that followed were breathtaking, a silent display of human connection that seemingly stretched into the heavens. Soft classical music played beneath the shimmering sky and as lanterns floated higher, tears flowed, hugs were shared and strangers became friends. Some wrote farewells while others penned declarations of love, all in the advancement of becoming something bigger than themselves.

Euphoric energy surged from that sacred stillness. Disclosure took over the towering Horizon Stage, one of the largest festival stages in the US, and dropped a slew of show-stopping house tracks including their recent collaboration with Anderson .Paak, “No Cap.”

Calvin Harris followed suit, unleashing a relentless string of chart-toppers from across the previous decade. His closing firework display painted the sky, codifying the day’s dreamlike fusion of rave and ritual. For all of Friday’s trials and tribulations, Saturday answered with transcendence.

As the evening unfolded on Sunday, the festival’s arc came full circle, with gentler performances inviting the crowd to slow down and savor the stillness beneath the desert sky. When John Mayer took the stage, LED bracelets flickered across the lake bed as lanterns rose in slow arcs overhead.

Looking out over the expanse, Mayer described the surreal scene as “Las Vegas-ish.” The crowd laughed, and he wasn’t wrong. Except this Vegas came with stars you couldn’t dim and a stage built on compact sand.

At RISE Festival, the music may be the headline, but it’s the ritual that becomes the story. In writing, waiting, releasing and rising together, thousands found a moment of shared humanity drifting skyward on lanterns and moonlight.

You can stay up to date on all things RISE via the festival’s website.