What is VanFest?

Part festival, part expo, and ALL focused around showcasing and celebrating the amazing vanlife / nomadic community.

VanFest gathers hundreds of converted vans, buses, and everything in-between for music, games, learning, and memories. This long-weekend event brings together the entire nomadic community for four days and nights of connection, celebration, and inspiration.

Open to everyone — whether you're in a van, bus, car/SUV, or just bringing a tent. Four unforgettable days and nights of live music, dance parties, epic potlucks, workshops, yoga, and more!

Van curious? Join us for unlimited tours of dozens of converted vans & buses, live music, local food trucks, workshops, lifestyle influencers, and industry-leading vendors. Kids are free!

Expert-led sessions, panels, and hands-on demos to help you hit the road the RIGHT way.

Industry-leading vanlife vendors and sponsors showcasing the latest gear and builds.

Dozens of amazing, unique conversions open for tours at every event.

Connect with hundreds of like-minded vanlifers, nomads, and travelers.

Get inspired for YOUR nomadic adventure from seasoned travelers and first-timers alike.

Live performances, dance parties, and unforgettable nights under the stars.

Let's Escape (back to) the Cape this summer! We'll be on picturesque Cape Cod for the second annual largest vanlife and nomadic celebration in New England!

Details coming soon for our Florida event! Stay tuned for what promises to be an unforgettable experience.

The Future of VanFest

Hi all,

If you're reading this, it means that you've been a key part of something special. Whether you've camped with us, wandered around an event as a curious first timer, or just followed along from the road, you are VanFest. And it's because of you that we want to be open about where things stand and where they might go from here.

As life events ebb and flow, we've come to realize that we don't have quite as much time as we used to to dedicate / ensure that VanFest delivers what this community truly deserves. That has not been an easy thing to admit to ourselves, and even more difficult to say it to all of you. VanFest has been one of the great joys of our lives, and the last thing we want is to give you anything less than our full heart and dedication.

Lately we've been doing a lot of introspection about what the future of VanFest should look like but the reality is this: at this point, we are not able to dedicate the time needed to keep VanFest going ourselves.

What this means: because we cannot deliver events that meet the high bar we've set for ourselves, we are not planning on any future events from here on, unless:

1. Someone offers to help run VanFest alongside us.

This means finding the right person to take the reins on the majority of business operations and event organization. Someone who lives and breathes this lifestyle, loves bringing people together, and wants to pour real energy into making every event unforgettable. Someone who is organized, outgoing, and wants to leave their own impact on what VanFest represents.

This means building sponsor relationships, engaging with the community through multiple channels, and organizing many of the moving parts of bringing an event together.

This would be a paid jack-of-all-trades role, with compensation tied directly to the success of each event so as we grow it together, it grows more rewarding too. If you've ever dreamed of building community for a living, this could be it!

2. Someone takes over VanFest entirely.

Whether you're an individual with a clear vision or an industry organization looking to add a genuine, community driven event series to your world, we're open to completely passing VanFest on to the right steward. Maybe you've got a large following of your own and you're looking for a mechanism to bring everyone together without building from scratch. Or perhaps you're part of an established organization that caters to the vanlife / nomadic community and want to integrate a grassroots community atmosphere into your brand.

Either way, we'd want to do this carefully and make sure it lands in hands that will protect everything that makes it special. We can talk through the specifics privately.

Honestly, either path is on the table and finding the right person or partner matters far more to us than the fine print. VanFest was built on trust and good people, and that's exactly how we want its next chapter to begin.

The one thing we know for certain is that VanFest's future has to keep the community at its center. The gatherings, the friendships, the builds, the shared love of a life of adventure, all of it needs to continue and grow, whether or not we're the ones steering.

If any of this speaks to you, or if someone you know would be a perfect fit, we'd love to hear from you. Just reply to this email and we'll chat.

Thank you for being part of this, truly. Whatever comes next, VanFest only exists because of this community, and we're grateful beyond words for every one of you.

Questions & Answers

I know this raises quite a few questions, and we've got a answers below to some of them:

Wait, are you okay? Is everything alright? Truly, yes, and thank you for asking. :) This isn't about anything scary, just life shifting around and our time getting pulled in new directions as we grow and evolve. VanFest deserves better than we're able to give it right now, and we'd rather be honest with you now than let it quietly coast and leave people feeling unfulfilled after a sub-par event experience.
Is Escape to the Cape still happening? Unfortunately, no. We're making the very difficult decision to cancel Escape to the Cape. Again, this comes from a place of not wanting to deliver a sub-par experience to all of you. If you've already purchased a ticket, you'll be getting a full refund to your original payment method within the next 10 business days.
Is LIFTOFF! 2027 still happening? Not at this time, no.
I want to get involved to help keep VanFest going, but I can't do anything full-time. That's okay! VanFest isn't a 40-hour-per-week thing - in fact if you're organized, it's only a few hours here and there until about a month before an event. If you have any experience in event organization, operations, marketing, etc then reach out and let's chat!
Someone / some company I know would be a GREAT fit for VanFest - what do I do? Awesome! You can email Lance directly (lance@vanfestusa.com) with any details - or just reply to this email.
If someone takes over, will VanFest still feel like.. VanFest? That's the single most important thing to us. We don't want to hand this off partially OR fully to anyone who doesn't genuinely get what makes this community special. The whole reason we're doing this thoughtfully, and reaching out to all of you first, is to make sure the heart of VanFest stays exactly where it belongs.
Is VanFest in financial trouble? Nope, not at all. VanFest is healthy and debt free. This is purely about our time and capacity - we wanted to say that plainly so nobody's left guessing.
So, what's next? For VanFest? We don't know. We've been talking to a few folks, casually, about taking over but there's nothing concrete at the moment. To be honest, unless we find someone to take over event operations, there's no plans for any future VanFest events. We just do not have the capacity to deliver an experience that would be able to meet the high bar we've set for ourselves. For us, personally? Well, we don't really know that either! But isn't that the fun part of life? We'll absolutely keep exploring the world, both in the van as well as outside of it.
Are you keeping your van / still doing vanlife? Of course! The van only has 150k miles, what are you, crazy?! At this point, having a van/converted vehicle of some sort is a hard requirement for us. While we're settling down a bit (we bought a house), the plan is to snowbird / seek warmer weather in the winter and be home in MA for the warmer months. We could never be without the freedom to just... go.
I have a question about..... We know this will raise a LOT of questions. Please email all questions to lance@vanfestusa.com. Note that it may take a week or three to hear back, but we will get back to everyone. Refunds for Escape to the Cape will happen automatically, with nothing for you to do on your end. Questions about refunds specifically will only be answered after the 10 business days have passed. If you have not received your refund by DATE, please reach out via email.

Thank Yous

Over the past ~5 years in a van we've been to a LOT of places, and met a LOT of people. From one-time encounters with other vanlifers at trailheads or random water spigots, to dear friends that we rejoice in seeing every time our paths cross, to people we fly halfway around the world to spend time with, this weird little community of even weirder people has been so overwhelmingly impactful to us in ways that we will still be talking about for decades to come.

These two words seem a bit inadequate, but we can't think of any other, so: thank you. Thank you to all of you who supported VanFest, who shared it with your friends and family, who opened up your homes to inspire the next generation of adventurers. Thank you to the amazing companies, brands, and people that run them that sponsored the events. Thank you to the food and beverage vendors, to the artists who performed, and to the venues that hosted us.

Thank you to the John and Finn, owners of United Tiny House. Their event in 2018 had about a dozen rigs that inspired us to build a van, to travel and explore, and ultimately to make VanFest what it is. The people who opened their rigs for tours, just like you, started a series of events that would ultimately lead to VanFest.

It only took a dozen rigs to inspire us to change the entire course of our lives and to create a community of thousands of people who have been paramount in redefining who we are and how we'll live.

To date VanFest has had 509 rigs open for tours and 4616 general admission folks exploring them in wonder and awe.

Imagine who you've already inspired.

Coda

The Journey

"It is a dangerous business, stepping out your door. You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no telling where you might be swept off to."

On Sunday, September 30, 2018 Jess and I were at a small United Tiny House show in the town we grew up in. It was purely by chance that we found it and at the time, we were so house-poor that we had trouble justifying the $20 to attend. There were only about a dozen rigs open for tours, but it was enough. Enough to inspire us and show us "you CAN actually do this" and, just over 2 years later, we put our own self-converted van in drive. We left home and hit the road with no destination in mind.

I say "no destination in mind" because at the time, that was true. "Out there" was all we were thinking of; of mountains and mesas and forests and beaches. We were dreaming of the nights we would spend falling asleep to the waves lapping the shore, or nestled an endless sea of cacti without another soul in sight for miles, or deep in the forests of the Pacific northwest surrounded by lush blankets of ferns whispering in the breeze between the slow, timeless groans of ancient redwoods.

And we lived it all. And throughout it, we built such an amazing community of our peers who, ultimately, became friends and an extension of our family and we thought, naively, that this was the destination.. but we were wrong. These experiences, this family were never the destination; they were the journey. They were the miles and the moments that mattered. They were what made this insane five-year adventure worth it, and what will stick with us for the rest of our lives.

The Destination

"It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end."

On Sunday, April 12, 2026 Jess and I took the familiar exit for the town that we had driven away from five years previously. The van had aged 133k miles in that time. By muscle memory we navigated the streets that we had driven thousands of times before and noticed little changes. A new restaurant here, a new traffic light there, a once-boring crosswalk now a vividly painted rainbow in celebration of Pride. We saw the harbor, passed by the tourist traps, and noted the (lack of) progress on the multi-year sewer replacement project. So many familiar things, engrained in our memories from living in one spot for nearly 20 years.

But then, we did something that we had not done in half a decade: we pulled into a driveway. But not just any driveway - we pulled into our driveway of our house that we had just purchased. We put the van in park and killed the engine, and the silence that followed was far deeper and more profound than we had anticipated. I suddenly remembered something that I had read years before, as if my brain had hidden it away in secret just to resurface it at this exact moment:

"I'm on my way home. I'm just taking the long way."

Sharing this, we realized in that moment that this was our destination. Five years ago, as we were filling the van with necessities and putting everything else in storage, and all we were thinking about was leaving. Of "hitting the road" and exploring the world, of leaving our familiar apartment behind in favor of the great unknown.

But it turns out that we were only ever on our way home. We just took the long way.

Above all, thank you to Gracie who adventured with us for 17 years.

We have no words to convey the impact she had on our lives or to describe the hole left in our hearts without her.

Escape to the Cape

What is VanFest?

Camping & Festival

Public Expo & Tours

Workshops & Classes

Amazing Vendors

Van & Rig Tours

Community

Inspiration

Live Music

Upcoming Events

Escape to the Cape

LIFTOFF!

Get Involved @ VanFest

Exhibit Your Rig

Sponsors & Vendors

Jobs @ VanFest

Our Sponsors

Check out VanFest!

Community Update

The Future of VanFest

Questions & Answers

Thank Yous

Coda

A Special Thank You