CBGB Eyes Permanent New York Reopening as Festival Revival Grows

Nearly 20 years after CBGB shut its doors on the Bowery, the team behind the legendary punk club’s revived brand is once again looking for a permanent New York City venue — even as its increasingly ambitious festival has become the centerpiece of the comeback.

CBGB brand manager and festival organizer Phil Sandhaus confirmed in a new interview with Rolling Stone that reopening an actual club remains a long-term goal and that the search for a location is active.

“Club businesses are tough business nowadays, especially in New York,” Sandhaus told the publication. “Rents are so high. But we’re looking.”

That wasn’t merely an idea prompted by the success of the CBGB Festival. In a separate interview with Inc. published several days earlier, Sandhaus said finding a new home for the club was actually where the current revival effort began.

“We started out looking for a new location to reopen CBGB,” Sandhaus said. But the economics of operating a club and the scarcity of suitable properties ultimately pushed the team toward another approach: reviving CBGB first as a music festival.

[EDITOR NOTE: SOURCE/OUTBOUND LINK — Credit and link Inc.’s Sept. 12 interview here.] Inc. interview with Phil Sandhaus

The result was the first CBGB Festival in 2025, staged at Under the K Bridge Park in Brooklyn with Iggy Pop and Jack White among its biggest names. The festival returns Sept. 26 with Morrissey, Patti Smith, Interpol and Sex Pistols featuring Frank Carter atop a lineup spanning several generations of punk and alternative music.

Sandhaus told Inc. that organizers deliberately sought a site capable of evoking some of the original club’s surroundings. The Bowery Presents helped identify Under the K Bridge Park, an industrial space beneath the Kosciuszko Bridge that Sandhaus said captured some of the edge associated with the Bowery when Hilly Kristal opened CBGB in 1973.

The festival is also evolving after its inaugural year. Rolling Stone reported that the 2026 edition will move from three stages to two, add more food options following complaints about long lines and improve sightlines in the VIP area. The official festival site now lists 17 bands across two stages.

General admission currently starts at $179 all-in, with a limited entry-before-4 p.m. ticket starting at $149 all-in. A “Young Punks” ticket for New York residents ages 16 to 24 starts at $99 plus fees, while VIP begins at $349.99 all-in. The festival site lists VVIP tickets as sold out.

The revived festival is intended to do more than recreate the bill of the old club. Sandhaus told Inc. that CBGB could have leaned entirely on punk and new wave nostalgia but instead wants to pair recognizable legacy acts with younger artists that reflect the original venue’s reputation as a discovery platform.

That approach is apparent on this year’s lineup, which puts Smith, Morrissey, Sex Pistols and Buzzcocks alongside artists including Militarie Gun, Mannequin Pussy, High Vis, Upchuck, Haywire and Violet Grohl. A Ramones tribute featuring Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker with Fred Armisen will also perform.

Smith’s appearance carries particularly obvious history. She performed at the original CBGB during its final night in October 2006. The building at 315 Bowery has long since become a John Varvatos clothing store, which still lists that address as an operating New York location. Any revived CBGB being contemplated now would therefore be a new venue rather than a restoration of the original space.

Sandhaus told Rolling Stone that the Lower East Side’s transformation and high rents complicate the search, floating Brooklyn or Queens as possibilities without identifying a particular property. No lease, address, capacity or potential opening date has been announced.

In the meantime, CBGB’s ambitions may extend beyond a single annual New York event. Sandhaus said organizers have discussed taking the festival elsewhere once the brand feels sufficiently reestablished, pointing to punk scenes in places including Ireland, London, Mexico City and South America.

A permanent-club comeback has been contemplated before. TicketNews reported in 2008 that a previous CBGB ownership group was meeting with potential partners in Las Vegas and exploring other entertainment markets as it attempted to revive the brand following Kristal’s death. Those plans never produced a lasting successor to the Bowery club.

The distinction this time is that the CBGB name already has a functioning live-event platform behind it. Rather than waiting for a new club before bringing the brand back, Sandhaus and his partners have used the festival to rebuild an audience while continuing the venue search.

For now, Under the K Bridge is effectively serving as CBGB’s temporary live-music home. Whether that revival eventually produces another set of permanent doors somewhere in New York remains the larger unanswered question.