Thursday — March 26th, 2026

Ultra Music Festival 2026 to Make History as First Major U.S. Electronic Festival to Power a Stage with Zero-Emission Batteries

Ultra’s ‘Mission: Home’ Sustainability Program teams up with REVERB’s Music Decarbonization Project, Showpower and CES Power to use ‘SmartGrid’ battery system on the RESISTANCE Cove Stage

Ultra’s award-winning sustainability program ‘Mission: Home’ will present 65 initiatives at the 2026 festival, after executing a record 61 initiatives at Ultra’s sold-out 25th anniversary and earning multiple new sustainability honors

Celebrating its six-year milestone, ‘Mission: Home’ has educated 8.2 million people, diverted nearly 400K pounds of waste and donated more than 84K pounds of resources back to the community since the program’s inception at Ultra Music Festival 2019

Download hi-res Mission: Home 2026 Press Assets

Ultra Music Festival 2026
Friday, March 27 – Sunday, March 29, 2026
Bayfront Park in Downtown Miami

Ultra Music Festival’s award-winning sustainability program Mission: Home is gearing up to make history at the 2026 edition next week by being the first major electronic music festival in America to power a large-scale stage without causing any onsite greenhouse gas emissions.

While most festival stages across the industry still rely on diesel generators, Ultra’s RESISTANCE Cove Stage will be powered by Showpower’s SmartGrid™ Battery System, which will be charged using existing grid infrastructure, creating no onsite emissions. This battery system is designed specifically for large-scale events and festivals, to maintain high-quality audio, lighting, video, and stage production with full redundancy and reliability. In fact, Showpower recently helped globally acclaimed band, Coldplay, power 86 stadium shows in 16 countries with batteries on their latest world tour.

“Each year, we push ourselves to think bigger, and this next chapter reflects how collaboration, innovation, and culture are coming together to create lasting impact.” — Vivian Belzaguy Hunter, Sustainability Director, Ultra Music Festival

Main Stage at Ultra Music Festival

This initiative is part of REVERB’s Music Decarbonization Project, which catalyzed the movement of major festivals and tours transitioning from diesel to battery-powered production in 2023. For more than two decades, REVERB has worked with artists and festivals to reduce environmental impact. Through its Music Decarbonization Project, the nonprofit fast-tracks innovative climate solutions to directly eliminate carbon pollution from the music industry.

“Ultra’s deployment is exactly the kind of forward-thinking action the industry needs,” said Adam Gardner, Co-Founder of REVERB. “By partnering with Showpower to bring battery-powered technology to a major electronic festival, Ultra is proving that climate solutions can enhance live music production. This is a blueprint for the future of festivals.”

As electronic music continues to shape global festival culture, Ultra’s move signals an important evolution for the genre’s largest events – demonstrating that high-energy production and environmental responsibility can go hand in hand. Ultra has earned recognition from both global and local environmental organizations for its comprehensive sustainability efforts, from pollution prevention and nature preservation to waste reduction, climate action, and community engagement.

RESISTANCE Cove Stage at Ultra Music Festival

In 2025, Ultra took another major step forward in climate action by working with CES Power and Showpower to transition two smaller stages to grid power, delivering measurable reductions in fossil fuel use. When the UMF Radio and Oasis stages joined the Live Stage in being powered by grid connections, three of Ultra’s seven stages became generator-free. The addition of battery-powered technology at the RESISTANCE Cove Stage marks the next evolution, becoming the festival’s first large-scale stage to make the transition and bringing the total to four generator-free stages. The deployment marks another major milestone in Ultra’s history, with the majority of its stages now operating onsite emission-free.

Showpower’s SmartGrid battery system’s deployment is being supported on-site by CES Power, a longtime Ultra production partner, which provides all temporary power distribution and cabling for the festival. The batteries will be integrated into the existing distribution system CES builds to power most of Ultra’s back of house production areas from the grid, ensuring a seamless implementation within the festival’s infrastructure. CES has also been a key collaborator in all previous stage transitions and several years of power efficiency data collection and planning, led by Showpower.

“For the past six years, Showpower‘s team has worked closely with Ultra and CES Power to develop intelligent and sustainable power solutions as part of Mission: Home,” says Paul Schurink, Co-Founder of Showpower. “A central focus has been measuring energy demand across the site to identify opportunities to reduce diesel consumption, fuel costs and carbon emissions. This year, Ultra’s RESISTANCE Cove Stage provides the greatest opportunity to do that, by replacing a generator with a battery system charged by grid power. We’re proud to deliver this milestone with REVERB — turning a long-standing ambition into reality for Ultra and the wider electronic music community.”

RESISTANCE Cove Stage at Ultra Music Festival

The expansion of emission-free stages at Ultra arrives as a welcome driver of Mission: Home’s unstoppable momentum. Last year, the festival became the first U.S.-based event of its scale in more than a decade to earn A Greener Future’s prestigious “Greener Festival” certification and was the only U.S. festival nominated for an ‘International AGF Award’. A Greener Future is one of the industry’s most rigorous global sustainability organizations, setting high international standards for festivals, events, arenas and suppliers who are breaking ground in event sustainability.

The festival was also named to IQ Magazine’s 2025 Green Guardians list, placing it among just 20 global sustainability leaders alongside Coldplay and Massive Attack. Additional honors include multiple accolades at the World Sustainability Awards, including a 2023 win of the Sustainability Team Award, and 3 years worth of Florida Festivals & Events Association (FFEA) SUNsational Awards. This brings Mission: Home’s total recognitions to 12 in its short lifespan, marking just the beginning of the program’s continued evolution.

Since launching in 2019, ‘Mission: Home’ has educated 8.2 million people worldwide, diverted nearly 400,000 pounds of waste from landfills, and donated more than 84,000 pounds of food, beverages, and supplies back to the local community. The program has grown each year, expanding from 20 initiatives in its first year to more than 60 at the 2025 event.

Despite all this success, ‘Mission: Home’ has no intention of slowing down. This mix of new and returning initiatives underscores Ultra’s sustained commitment to protecting and giving back to the Miami community through meaningful local partnerships, setting a rare standard that has put the festival on the global sustainability map. Other new initiatives this year will include a pilot of reusable souvenir cups sponsored by Red Bull and the launch of the ‘Mission: Home Cleanup Countdown’ in partnership with Clean Vibes. This initiative will invite attendees to support cleaning crews at the Main and Live stages after the event as a 20-minute clock counts down on festival stage screens. Attendees who bring back a full bag of trash will receive a piece of exclusive Ultra merchandise as a thank you.

“Mission: Home has grown into something much bigger than a sustainability program… it’s become a powerful platform for inspiring action, building community, and showing what’s possible at scale.” – Vivian Belzaguy Hunter, Sustainability Director, Ultra Music Festival

As Mission: Home enters its sixth year, Ultra continues to demonstrate how the world’s biggest dance floors can also become drivers of meaningful change. From onsite emission-free stages to an ever-expanding list of sustainability initiatives, Ultra is helping shape the future of live events and the global electronic music community.

Stay tuned for more updates on Mission: Home’s full Ultra 2026 program on ultramusicfestival.com/mission-home.

Main Stage at Ultra Music Festival

ABOUT REVERB

REVERB is the music industry’s leading sustainability partner. For more than 20 years, the nonprofit has harnessed the cultural power of music to drive real-world change. Founded in 2004 by environmentalist Lauren Sullivan and Guster frontman Adam Gardner, REVERB has partnered with festivals, venues, industry leaders and hundreds of artists across all genres, including Billie Eilish, Dave Matthews Band, Lorde, Dead & Company, Tyler Childers, Tame Impala, Jack Johnson, and many more. Together with REVERB, they’ve greened thousands of concerts, mobilized concertgoers to take over 8 million climate actions, eliminated 4.6 million single-use plastic bottles, brought large-scale clean energy solutions to live music, and raised over $26 million for environmental and social causes. With its 360-degree model — from backstage operations and touring logistics to fan engagement and stewarding funds on behalf of partners — REVERB makes it easy for artists and the music industry to reduce their footprint, while amplifying their collective voice for a healthier planet.

ABOUT SHOWPOWER

Showpower designs intelligent, sustainable energy systems for the world’s leading live events. Working with international festivals, stadium touring artists and global productions, Showpower combines advanced energy monitoring, system design and its modular SmartGrid battery storage technologies to optimise power use and reduce reliance on fossil-fuel generators. From demand modelling and system architecture through to implementation and onsite energy management, these systems enable complex live productions to operate with reliable, efficient and increasingly low-carbon power while accelerating the industry’s transition toward emission free, battery-led and grid-integrated energy solutions. Showpower has consulted on and delivered energy systems for globally recognised artists and events including Coldplay The Music of the Spheres World Tour, Above & Beyond, Global Citizen Festival New York and Belém, MDLBEAST Soundstorm, Lollapalooza Chicago, Lollapalooza Berlin, and Netflix Is a Joke Festival, among many others. Showpower is helping build the clean energy infrastructure that will power the next generation of major live events and productions.

ABOUT CES POWER

CES Power has been a leader in the Festival and Event industry for years providing Top-Tier Power generation solutions for all types of Festivals, Concerts, Tours , sporting events and live broadcasting worldwide. With a team having more than 25 years of experience powering the Vision of our clients providing excellence and reliability for all their events.