Burning Man’s 2025 theme announcement arrives after increasingly urgent calls for participants to donate.
Burning Man‘s recent attempts to raise additional funds have led members of its community to question what its future might look like. The organization that runs the annual arts gathering in Nevada‘s Black Rock Desert appears to be leaning into this curiosity by announcing that the gathering’s 2025 theme is Tomorrow Today.
Each year since 1995, longtime burner Stuart Mangrum — who initially attended in 1993 and delivered the event’s first theme, Good and Evil, in 1995 — offers up new iconography to inspire the thousands of artists and entertainers who collectively build the temporary city. Writing for the Burning Man Journal, he explains that the 2025 theme is an “invitation to imagine the future in new ways, and to make it real through our collective actions.”
“In the exuberant spirit of the prior century’s world fairs, which celebrated not only scientific progress but also cultural exchange and artistic excellence, the 2025 edition of Black Rock City will showcase Burning Man’s global culture of art and innovation,” Mangrum elaborates. “It will provide a venue for us to dream, invent, prototype and share our best and brightest ideas for the years ahead.”
Accompanying Mangrum’s article is artwork by Mike Hampton that depicts three aircraft flying into the sky alongside Burning Man fixtures like lanterns hanging from wooden spires as well as the man itself and retrofuturistic relics. Hampton derived inspiration from Burning Man art car Disco Space Shuttle, Oakland art collective Five Ton Crane, and Burning Man Temple originator David Best.
Last month, Burning Man Project CEO Marian Goodell revealed that the organization needs to double its year-end fundraising target to $20 million to compensate for lower-than-expected 2024 ticket sales. A couple weeks later, in a message that originally appeared in Burning Man’s The Jackrabbit Speaks newsletter, Goodell opted for more urgent language. She wrote that “Now is the time to ensure that Burning Man can persist into the future — not just as an annual event in the desert, but as a cultural institution that will be here decades from now, empowering future generations to reimagine the world they live in.”
Burning Man 2025 is slated to take place from August 24-September 1, 2025. Find more information on the event website.
