A music festival is a community event with performances of singing and instrument playing that is often presented with a theme such as musical genre, nationality, locality of musicians, or holiday. Music festivals are generally organized by individuals or organizations within networks of music production, typically music scenes, the music industries, or institutions of music education.

A festival is an event celebrated by a community and centering on some characteristic aspect or aspects of that community and its religion or cultures. It is often marked as a local or national holiday, mela, or eid. A festival constitutes typical cases of glocalization, as well as the high culture-low culture interrelationship. Next to religion and folklore, a significant origin is agricultural. Food is such a vital resource that many festivals are associated with harvest time. Religious commemoration and thanksgiving for good harvests are blended in events that take place in autumn, such as Halloween in the northern hemisphere and Easter in the southern.