<\/p>\nHondo Rodeo Fest’s New Orleans dates in April, 2026 were announced at the Greater New Orleans Sports Foundation’s annual “Hall of Fame” awards luncheon on Thursday, Nov 6, 2025.<\/p>\n
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\n Anthony McAuley<\/span>
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\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nWhile the country acts for New Orleans haven’t yet been announced, Cicero said the lineup for the Hondo Rodeo Fest running this weekend at Chase Field in Phoenix gives an idea of what to expect. On Friday, Nickelback and Treaty Oak Revival will be playing, followed by Kid Rock and Jon Pardi on Saturday and closing on Sunday with Jason Aldean and Riley Green.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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A big hit<\/h3>\n
WrestleMania\u2019s cancellation in New Orleans landed hard. When the event came in 2014 and 2018, it delivered some of the largest tourism spikes of the decade \u2014 tens of thousands of out-of-town visitors, massive hotel demand, and a weeklong series of ancillary wrestling shows.<\/p>\n
City officials had expected an even larger impact in 2026. Instead, they were left with a vacancy in what is normally one of the most lucrative travel periods of the year.<\/p>\n
GNOSF spent months surveying potential replacements: sports, music, festivals, and branded entertainment weekends. Hondo was attractive not only because of Phoenix\u2019s early results, but because its formula mirrors what WrestleMania does well: multiple days, diverse programming and a fan culture willing to travel.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Nungesser said Louisiana\u2019s existing rodeo culture \u2014 from the Angola Prison Rodeo to dozens of regional events \u2014 provides a built-in marketing base.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to make sure every one of those rodeo fans knows that Hondo is in New Orleans next April,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Gov. Jeff Landry also lauded the win for the tourism calendar.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThis event represents the kind of major entertainment investment that drives tourism, supports local business, and strengthens our state\u2019s growing live events economy,” Landry said.<\/p>\n
Big acts coming<\/h3>\n
While Hondo has not yet revealed its musical lineup for New Orleans, the plan is to announce headliners in phases beginning later this year.<\/p>\n
Tourism officials say the concert component is likely to be the decisive driver for hotel bookings, just as it was in Phoenix.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Though the 2026 event is a single-year booking for now, GNOSF and state officials have said the event will be booked for the subsequent two years if all goes well. The Superdome provides an indoor, weather-proof environment that gives New Orleans an advantage over many major-rodeo markets.<\/p>\n
If Hondo succeeds in New Orleans, it may become part of a second wave of anchor events the city is cultivating: large, multi-day, high-production weekends that aren\u2019t tied to traditional local culture but can reliably fill tens of thousands of seats.<\/p>\n
For now, Hondo\u2019s first New Orleans outing will serve as a large-scale test \u2014 both of the young rodeo festival\u2019s ambitions and of the city\u2019s evolving tourism strategy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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New Orleans may have lost WrestleMania, but sports and tourism leaders are betting that a well-packaged mix of broncs, bulls, and country-music stars can rope in a new audience and keep those spring tourism numbers riding high.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.nola.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New Orleans is aiming to lasso a new kind of mega-event to plug one of the biggest holes in its 2026 tourism calendar. On Thursday, officials announced that Hondo Rodeo Fest \u2014 the fast-growing rodeo and country-music weekend that debuted in Phoenix in 2024 \u2014 will come to the Caesars Superdome in April, bringing three […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2142056,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[128321],"class_list":["post-2142055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-hardwall"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Hondo-Rodeo-Fest-hits-New-Orleans-April-2026-Business.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2142055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2142055"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2142055\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2142057,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2142055\/revisions\/2142057"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2142056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2142055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2142055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2142055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}