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VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Falkor//Falkor Events//EN
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DTSTART:20260930T160000Z
DTEND:20261004T230000Z
SUMMARY:Wasteland Weekend 2026 — California City\, CA
DESCRIPTION:Wasteland Weekend 2026 is North America's largest post-apocalyptic festival\, held over five days in the Mojave Desert of Central California every September. Founded in 2010 and held at a dry lakebed site near California City\, the festival draws approximately 4\,000 to 5\,000 attendees annually who arrive in full post-apocalyptic costume — hand-fabricated from scratch\, no exceptions — for five days of themed competitions\, live music\, art cars\, fire performance\, and full immersion in a world they collectively built. No street clothes are permitted on the main event grounds.\n\nNothing in American festival culture matches Wasteland Weekend's commitment to world-building. Every car in the lot has been modified. Every vendor stall is in character. The live music skews industrial\, metal\, tribal bass\, and anything that sounds like a civilization ending and beginning simultaneously. Art cars drive across the lakebed at sunset while fire performers work the main stage area. The people who attend are not performing for a passive audience — they are the audience and the performance simultaneously. The dust\, the scale\, and the collective commitment produce something that people who have attended once spend years trying to describe accurately to people who have not.\n\nWasteland Weekend is worth attending if you want to experience what happens when a community invests years of craft in a shared fiction. The costume requirement is the entry fee that filters for commitment — the people who show up in full welded-metal battle armor they have been building since last October are categorically different from standard festival-goers. If you have never made a costume in your life\, this is not a passive spectator experience. If you have been waiting for an environment that rewards making something entirely impractical: this is it. The Mojave Desert in September averages 90 degrees Fahrenheit by day and 55 degrees at night.\n\nWeekend passes range from $250-350 for full access depending on when you purchase. Costumes are mandatory on the event grounds\; street clothes are permitted only in parking and camping areas. Full on-site camping is available in designated post-apocalyptic camp areas — RV\, tent\, and clan-style group setups all operate. The nearest large cities are Bakersfield (90 minutes northwest) and Lancaster (40 minutes southwest). Bring desert survival gear: shade canopies\, electrolytes\, cooling towels. Build your costume at home. Early bird tickets sell out months in advance.\n\nWasteland Weekend is the American festival that comes closest to what Burning Man originally described — a temporary city where every inhabitant is simultaneously a creator and a participant. The post-apocalyptic aesthetic is the frame\, but the practice underneath is identical: arrive with what you made\, participate fully\, leave nothing but tracks in the desert. Nation's Best. September in the Mojave.
LOCATION:California City\, CA 93505
URL:https://www.falkorevents.com/eventcal/event/5761/details/
UID:event-5761@falkorevents.com
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