Upstate New York’s underground is about to get loud again. Endless Fires Fest is officially set for August 15 and 16, 2026, at Sharkeys Event Center in Syracuse, New York, with a pre-party brewing on August 14 and details promised soon. Consider this your early warning: clear the calendar, charge the earplugs, and maybe call out of work for that following Monday.

The first wave lineup reads like a fever dream stitched together from the best basement shows, VFW halls, and parking-lot pits of the last three decades. Three 6 Mafia and Project Pat are headlining the hip hop side, while hardcore and punk royalty Circle Jerks, American Nightmare, Comeback Kid, Madball, E.Town Concrete, Lionheart (in an exclusive East Coast performance), Crown Of Thornz, Wisdom In Chains, Eighteen Visions, Deadguy, Fury of Five, and Weekend Nachos round out a genre-blurring weekend that only Syracuse could conjure with a straight face.

Festival founder Keith Allen framed the return in unmistakably mission-statement terms: “Endless Fires is both a return and a rebirth. It is a celebration of the underground music scene based in upstate NY, and centered in Syracuse, in the form of a multi-day, summertime festival. Often imitated but never recreated, the lore and the legacy of that fest are infamous. Here we are, some decades later, rekindling the flame and bringing back that tradition. The fire has never gone out and now it’s going to burn brighter than ever before.”

For anyone who lived through the original era of upstate fests, that quote hits like a Madball breakdown. For everyone else, it’s an invitation to find out why the lore won’t die.

The full first-wave bill currently includes Three 6 Mafia, Project Pat, American Nightmare, Circle Jerks, Comeback Kid, E.Town Concrete, Lil Wyte, Weekend Nachos, Missing Link, Gridiron, Lionheart, Madball, Crown Of Thornz, Wisdom In Chains, Beyond Repair, Bodybox, Eighteen Visions, Ouija Macc, Deadguy, Chain Gang, D Bloc, Fury of Five, Combust, Mushmouth, Lifeless, Strength For A Reason, No Leash, No Grave, Suffocate Faster, and Ante Up. A second wave of performers will be announced in two weeks, at which point single-day tickets will also go on sale.

Weekend tickets are available now at https://syracusetix.com/event/endless-fires-festival-w-three-six-mafia/ — and if history is any guide, the lore will sell them out faster than you can say “Stay Fly.”

Get into Three 6 Mafia ahead of the fest here: https://open.spotify.com/search/Three%206%20Mafia