Sharon Osbourne has said Ozzfest will “absolutely” return, with the late Ozzy Osbourne‘s blessing.
Ozzfest’s inaugural edition took place in October 1996 and spanned two days. The following year, it expanded into a full-blown tour rather than a one-time event, and then continued annually almost every year up until 2018 (although it reverted to a single-day event from 2008).
The final instalment was held in Inglewood, California on New Year’s Eve 2018 and saw performances from Rob Zombie, Marilyn Manson, DevilDriver and Ozzy himself.
Now, the TV personality, music manager, and widow of the Black Sabbath frontman and heavy metal pioneer has confirmed that the hard rock and metal festival that they launched together 30 years ago will be returning.
Appearing at the MIDEM (The Global Meeting for Music Industry Leaders) 2026 conference in Cannes, France, last month, Sharon was asked if Ozzfest would be returning, to which she responed: “Yes, absolutely. We’re gonna do it.”
“The last one we did was 2018. It was just a month before Ozzy got sick, and that was at the Forum in L.A. And there [were] no plans to stop it. We were still gonna do it, but Ozzy couldn’t. And Ozzy and I would talk about it, and he’d say, ‘Do you think Ozzfest would work without me?’ And I’m, like, ‘Yeah, it’s a brand. It will work without you.’ And he said, ‘We should do it.’”
It comes after Sharon said in January that she was considering bringing OzzFest back, and it could be as soon as 2027.
“It was something Ozzy was very passionate about: giving young talent a stage in front of a lot of people,” she said. “We really started metal festivals in this country. It was [replicated but] never done with the spirit of what ours was, because ours was a place for new talent. It was like summer camp for kids.”
She went on to say that while nothing had been set in stone yet, the festival could be launching as soon as 2027. However, the event would now be centring on multiple different music genres, rather than just rock and metal.
She made a similar nod towards a return of OzzFest back in January 2024, stating on The Osbournes podcast that she would like to do another iteration of the festival, provided she could iron out some minor setbacks.
After Kelly Osbourne – the daughter of Sharon and Ozzy – said that it would ultimately “comes down to” whether or not the artists and managers could be “realistic” about what they wanted to get paid, Sharon continued: “Why is it when it comes to us that everybody thinks that we are trillionaires?”
“Every manager who wants their band on our festival wants one of the fucking trillions they think we’ve got to put on the festival?”
The comments echoed what she said in November 2023 too, when she revealed that OzzFest ultimately came to an end as managers for artists playing there became too “greedy”.
“We made a profit. But it was not like – we couldn’t retire on it,” she said. “And managers and agents wanted more and more and more, and it just wasn’t cost-effective anymore. We stopped because it just wasn’t cost-effective.”
She then gave an example of the demands that she received from some artists’ managers, including one act refusing to “go on stage until I agreed to give them $10,000 more”.
Last year, Sharon helped organise the star-studded ‘Back To The Beginning’ show, which took place at Villa Park in Birmingham over the summer. It was the final show from both Ozzy and Black Sabbath, and took place just over two weeks before the Prince Of Darkness passed away.
She’s since said, in an episode of The Osbournes podcast in November, that the true number raised for charity thanks to the show was around $11million (£8.24million).
In other news, last week’s BRIT Awards saw Sharon take to the stage alongside her daughter, Kelly, to accept the Lifetime Achievement prize that had been awarded to Ozzy.
Kelly later took to Instagram just hours later to hit out at people criticising her appearance, saying she would not allow herself to be “dehumanized”.
Elsewhere, Robbie Williams led an all-star tribute to Ozzy at the BRITs, singing ‘No More Tears’ backed by a band made up of regular Ozzy collaborators Adam Wakeman, Robert Trujillo, Tommy Clufetos and Zakk Wylde.
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