Fyre Festival

Fyre Festival was a failed luxury music festival organized by American businessman Billy McFarland and American rapper Ja Rule. It was originally created to promote the company's Fyre app for booking music talent. The festival was scheduled to take place on April 28–30 and May 5–7, 2017, on the Bahamian island of Great Exuma.

The event was promoted on Instagram by social media influencers, actors, reality TV stars and models including Kendall Jenner, Bella Hadid, Hailey Baldwin, and Emily Ratajkowski, many of whom did not initially disclose they had been paid to do so. During the Fyre Festival's inaugural weekend, the event experienced problems related to security, food, accommodation, medical services, and artist relations, resulting in the festival being indefinitely postponed and eventually cancelled. Instead of the gourmet meals and luxury villas for which festival attendees had paid hundreds or even thousands of dollars, they received packaged sandwiches and were lodged in poorly furnished tents.

In March 2018, McFarland pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud to defraud investors and ticket holders, and a second count to defraud a ticket vendor (while out on bail). In October 2018, McFarland was sentenced to six years in prison and ordered to forfeit US$26 million. At least eight lawsuits were initiated against the organizers for defrauding ticket buyers, with several seeking class action status and one seeking more than $100 million in damages, and a judgment for US$2 million.

Two documentaries about the events of the festival were released in 2019: Hulu's Fyre Fraud, and Netflix's Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened. It has also been featured on an episode of the Discovery Channel series Hustlers Gamblers Crooks.

In February 2025, it was reported that McFarland was selling tickets for "Fyre 2", to run from May 30 to June 2, 2025. On April 4, 2025, news organizations reported that two cities in Mexico had denied the festival is taking place and have no knowledge of the event; this includes the most recently announced location, Playa del Carmen. The announced dates were canceled on April 16, 2025, with organizers stating that the festival would be eventually rescheduled.

On June 2, 2025, Fyre Festival announced the launch of Fyre Coral View Pop-up and Fyre Hotels, happening at the Coral View Beach Resort on the Island Utila in the Bay Islands of Honduras on September 3 through 10. The consideration of Utila as a possible location and scouting it date back to social media posts from February 29, 2024.

The festival was organized by Billy McFarland and Ja Rule to promote the Fyre music booking app. Ja Rule had come to know McFarland through regular visits to events McFarland hosted for his previous venture, Magnises. During a flight to the Bahamas, McFarland and Ja Rule's private plane touched down on a lightly populated island which they later discovered was Norman's Cay, the former private island of Carlos Lehder Rivas, a kingpin of the Medellín Cartel and a close associate of its leader, Pablo Escobar. McFarland then leased the island from the current owners, with the owners giving the strict condition that McFarland make no reference to Escobar in any marketing materials.

Promotional footage with hired supermodels was shot on Norman's Cay, and planning for the festival went ahead. On December 12, 2016, Kendall Jenner, Emily Ratajkowski, and other influencers paid by Fyre simultaneously posted to their Instagram feeds a video with a thumbnail consisting of an orange square and a logo made of stylized flames. The video showed Bella Hadid and other models represented by her agency running around a tropical beach. Text with the video promised "an immersive music festival ... two transformative weekends ... on the boundaries of the impossible". This was the beginning of the Fyre Festival's promotional campaign, during which McFarland himself claimed that the island had been owned by Pablo Escobar, a falsehood. The owners cancelled their arrangement with McFarland soon after.