The final Sundance Film Festival in its home in over 40 years, Park City, Utah, will miss a key place from the festival’s stored history: the Egyptian theater on Main Street will not return to the 2026 edition before Sundance moves to Boulder, Colorado, which begins in 2027.
The theater, which was opened on Christmas Day 1926, has served as a live performing arts space in addition to acting as a cinema. It was remarkably left out “What to know about the 2026 Sundance Film Festival” Letter Written by Director of Sundance Film Festival and Public Programming, Eugene Hernandez, which Press received on July 14.
The Egyptian Theater’s CEO Randy Barton told Park City’s local NPR connected KPCW That the arena really put out the last Sundance completely and “is no longer set up for film” at all. There will be exclusively a live performance space in the future.
However, a source from Sundance tells IndieWire that there is a desire to find a moment in the last Park City festival to recognize the shared story and the legacy that the festival has with the Egyptian, although it really will not be a place this time.
That moment of recognition would be well worth it: Egyptian is there so many iconic moments in Sundance history has taken place. As a long time home for the midnight section, this is the “The Blair Witch Project” and “Heredary” premiered. Not to mention many others, including Lars von Trier’s “Nymphomaniac”, who had a secret show there on Sundance in advance for its official premiere in Berlin. Before the Eccles theater opened at Park City High School, the Egyptian festival was the showcase theater.
In better news, however, the Yarrow Theater will return now that Slamdance has left Park City to Los Angeles. The Sundance Rival took over the theater, located in the Yarrow Doubletree Hotel at Park Avenue, for the 2024 edition of the festival, and it sat until 2025, despite Sundance moving its festival head office and press brand Pickup there this year. (However, the festival head office will return to Sheraton, further afield, 2026. Doug Liman’s still unreleased Brett Kavanaugh documentary, “Justice.”
Although they are permanently closed for the rest of the year – as specified by Google, it will remove from the owner’s Metropolitan Theater’s website and the reporting of an IndieWire source that was recently on the ground in Park City – Holiday Village Cinemas will open again during a special arrangement only for Sundance 2026, which it also made 2025.
Other screening places for Sundance 2026 will be Eccles Theater, Library Center Theater, The Ray Theater and Redstone Cinemas.
