Keith Urban is returning to Vancouver Island to headline a four-day music festival tourism groups call “country music lovers’ paradise.”
The Grammy-award winning country music singer, songwriter and guitarist will perform at Sunfest Country Music Festival in 2024, organizers announced Friday.
“Keith Urban is back for Sunfest 2024! After two years of trying to bring Keith back to Laketown Ranch, we are thrilled to have him grace our Main Stage once again,” according to a post on Sunfest’s Facebook page.
The announcement comes amid Sunfest 2023, which wraps up today (Aug. 6) with headliner Blake Shelton at Laketown Ranch Music and Recreation Park near Lake Cowichan. Billy Currington and Lainey Wilson also performed this year.
Urban, the Australian country-music star, has scored 20 number-one singles on the US Hot Country Songs chart, including 2002’s “Somebody Like You.” He’s also won four Grammy Awards, 13 CMA Awards and 15 Academy of Country Music Awards.
Most recently the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, which honours “Nashville’s rich songwriting legacy,” on Thursday announced that Urban was among its class of 2023 inductees.
“It’s truly surreal,” said Urban, adding that if someone told him in his early career that he would one day be inducted in the hall, “I just wouldn’t have believed it.”
WATCH: Port Alberni’s Lauren Spencer-Smith joins Urban on stage at Sunfest 2015
Urban previously performed at Sunfest in 2015, when he headlined the festival with thousands of concertgoers in attendance. He was set to headline again in 2020, but organizers pulled the plug that year due to COVID-19. In 2021 the festival was cancelled again because of the pandemic.
Next year’s festival is happening Aug. 1-4, 2024, and organizers say first-tier tickets will be sold online starting at 9 a.m. on Aug. 22.
-With files from The Associated Press
Ethan Morneau
