12 banjo players compete for a spot in the finals on Saturday on the Main Stage. The winner of the banjo contest earns a Deering John Hartford Banjo!

Learn more about the RockyGrass Instrument Contests.

12 flatpick guitar players compete for a spot in the finals on Saturday on the Main Stage. The winner of the guitar contest earns a Preston Thompson D-MA Guitar!

Learn more about the RockyGrass Instrument Contests.

12 mandolin players compete for a spot in the finals on Saturday on the Main Stage. The winner of the mandolin contest earns a Bourgeois M5-A Mandolin!

Learn more about the RockyGrass Instrument Contests.

12 fiddlers compete for a spot in the finals on Saturday on the Main Stage. The winner of the fiddle contest earns a Thomas Verdot Paragon Fiddle!

Learn more about the RockyGrass Instrument Contests.

12 dobro players compete for a spot in the finals on Saturday on the Main Stage. The winner of the dobro contest earns a check for $750!

Learn more about the RockyGrass Instrument Contests.

hosted by Pete Wernick, Joan Wernick & Janeen Bogue (bring your instrument, no experience required)

12 bands compete around a single microphone for a spot in the finals on Sunday. The winner of the band contest earns a spot on the main stage of the 2027 RockyGrass Festival. Past winners include: Steep Canyon Rangers, The Fretliners, and last year’s winners Slay & Stinson.

Learn more about the RockyGrass Band Contest.

Slay & Stinson kicked in the door at the 2025 RockyGrass Band Contest, and on Saturday they return to the Wildflower Pavilion for something special. Built around multi-instrumentalist songwriter Scott Slay and Nashville-forged vocalist Travis Stinson, the band draws from a musical life that spans Florida front-porch bluegrass, Gulf Coast jazz and blues, Virginia mountain music, and the Colorado jamgrass scene. Joined by Nick Einterz on banjo, Brett Kretzer on mandolin, Andy Reiner on fiddle, and Chuck Rourke on bass, they are tight, soulful, and built to burn.

For this set, they take on Hot Rize’s beloved debut, the biscuit album, playing it front to back with special guest Pete “Dr. Banjo” Wernick, Hot Rize’s own banjo player. That 1979 record helped define what Colorado bluegrass could be. Hearing it played live in the canyon air of the Planet Bluegrass Ranch, by the band that just won this very contest, with one of its original architects on stage: that’s not just a tribute. That’s a recipe for a heckuva fun afternoon in the Wildflower Pavilion.

Two kids chasing the same music on one small Pacific Northwest island, and it took a chance encounter, a local noodle shack, and an accidental assist from guitarist Bill Frisell to introduce them. Wes Corbett and Simon Chrisman have been fast friends ever since, cutting two albums with the chamber grass outfit the Bee Eaters and stealing a tune whenever tours crossed. Their self-titled duo record is the sound of that friendship: banjo and hammer dulcimer in easy, inventive conversation.

Corbett, a Pacific Northwest native, took up the banjo at sixteen after leaving classical piano behind, later teaching at Berklee before settling into Nashville’s bluegrass elite. He is the banjo player for the Sam Bush Band, with several solo albums to his name including his latest, “Drift.” Chrisman brings a virtuosic, rhythmically daring touch to the hammer dulcimer, an instrument once thought limited, now redrawn in his hands; he tours with the Jeremy Kittel Band and the Bee Eaters. Together Wes and Simon released a self-titled album in 2018, that was one of our favorite albums of that year.

In the intimate shade of the Wildflower Pavilion, close to the St. Vrain, these old friends will trade melodies the way they always have: for the pure joy of it. Pull up close; you’re in on the conversation now.

The top 3 bands from the Saturday preliminary round compete around a single microphone for a spot on the main stage of the 2027 RockyGrass Festival.

Past winners include: Steep Canyon Rangers, The Fretliners, and last year’s winners Slay & Stinson.

Learn more about the RockyGrass Band Contest.

Two fiddles, one long friendship, and a Sunday afternoon in the Wildflower Pavilion. Casey Driessen and Luke Bulla have been trading ideas since they founded the band Wisechild together, and after a week teaching and jamming at the RockyGrass Academy, they arrive ready to share the spark.

Casey Driessen is the GRAMMY-nominated experimenter Zac Brown once called “a mad scientist with a five-string fiddle.” He built a standardized notation for the percussive technique known as chopping, launched the Blue Ridge Fiddle Camp, and recently circled the globe for his Otherlands project, all in his signature red shoes. Luke Bulla is a different kind of prodigy: a six-time National Fiddle Contest champion who claimed the Grand Champion title at sixteen, earned a Grammy in Ricky Skaggs’ Kentucky Thunder, and toured for years with Lyle Lovett’s Large Band, with a new EP now in the works. Catch Driessen on the main stage Saturday afternoon in Tony Trischka’s EarlJam.

Pull up close as these two masters turn the twin fiddle tradition inside out, still carrying the Academy’s energy onto the pavilion floor. By the St. Vrain on the final day, this is the kind of intimate gathering RockyGrass does best.

Abigail Washburn was on her way to becoming a lawyer in China when a chance encounter at an IBMA convention handed her a record deal and changed everything. Since then, she has built one of the most singular bodies of work in American roots music: bilingual folk records, her “all-g’earl” string band Uncle Earl, a Grammy-winning duo with husband Béla Fleck that earned the 2016 Grammy for Best Folk Album, and a 2020 collaboration with Chinese guzheng virtuoso Wu Fei on Smithsonian Folkways that braids Appalachian and traditional Chinese folk into something entirely new.

RockyGrass knows her well; she has graced the main stage solo, with Uncle Earl, and alongside Béla. Sunday’s Wildflower Pavilion set, “Unaccompanied Mountain Songs,” strips everything back to the source: just her voice, her banjo, and the ancient hollows these songs were born in. In a catalog that spans continents and collaborators, there is something rare and arresting about hearing Abigail with nothing between the music and the Colorado air. Find your spot early.

Colorado has a bluegrass story all its own, and Slipstream helped write it. This beloved Boulder band earned their place in the hearts of Festivarians with a sound the Colorado Daily called “depth and beauty rarely heard from such a compact combo” — progressive bluegrass rooted in tradition, honest as the mountains it came from. After years away, members and collaborators of Slipstream are gathering again inside the Wildflower Pavilion for something rare: a Sunday reunion built around the songs and songwriters of this state. Colorado tunes, Colorado voices, and the particular ache and joy that only this landscape seems to produce. The St. Vrain rushes just outside the Pavilion walls, the cliffs rise above, and the weekend is nearly done — there’s no better place to let the music carry you home.