Milwaukee is a vibrant, diverse city with a knack for throwing a good party. Affectionately nicknamed “City of Festivals”, Milwaukee’s calendar is chalk-full of celebrations of culture, art, food, libations and just about anything else one could celebrate. Being born and raised in Milwaukee, I grew up around the many cultural festivals like German Fest, Greek Fest, Festa Italiana, Bastille Days, Polish Fest and more. Then you have broader city-wide festivals like The Wisconsin State Fair, Pridefest, and a treasure-trove of indoor and outdoor live music events, niche-specific parties and no shortage of events celebrating beer and drink (it is the Brew City as well, after all). If you’re looking for a good time, this charming city on Lake Michigan’s southwestern shores certainly delivers!

Sunset over Milwaukee Summerfest, world's largest music festival

The crown jewel of the city’s impressive lineup of festivals, however, is a multi-weekend, 12-stage music festival that holds the prestigious title of the world’s largest music festival— Milwaukee’s world-famous Summerfest. Summerfest was started in 1968 by then-Mayor Henry W. Maier, inspired by his visit to Munich’s famed Oktoberfest. Since then, the festival has grown in notoriety, reaching more than 1 million attendees by 2001.

I’d been to Summerfest many times throughout high-school and college, but this summer my wife and I made the trip back to my hometown and attended the festival with a bit of a different vantage-point: as a family. We brought our 18-month-old daughter to attend the festival along with my siblings, our nieces and nephews and my parents!

There are lots of things that set Summerfest apart from other well-known festivals. You don’t have to travel out into the wilderness or camp in an isolated festival location, as the Summerfest grounds are located right downtown Milwaukee on the Lake Michigan Shoreline. That makes accommodation options plentiful across the city, and you have easy access to Milwaukee’s incredible dining and bar scene. The food options within the festival grounds are excellent as well, where a ton of local favorite restaurants have stands serving their most popular dishes.

Our favorite thing about Summerfest, though, is how truly family friendly it is. We’re not talking fun-for-the-kids-but-lame-for-adults here either. The world’s largest musical festival has done right by every age and designed an experience that caters to the whole family in a mind-blowingly seamless sort of way. We started eating as soon as we arrived (as you must do at Summerfest), checking off some of our faves like Saz’s famous mozzarella marinara, a Door County cherry cocktail for the adults, and the ole’ classic corn on the cob. We dropped by some musical performances and let the kids dance as we ate and explored. Then we brought all the kids over to the Northwestern Mutual Community Park, an impressively large inclusive & accessible family entertainment space, to play their little hearts out while we continued snacking and planning our next move.

When the kids got too tired to hang, some of the parents walked them home for bedtime (did we mention how walkable downtown Milwaukee is?!) and the rest of the adults grabbed another drink and listened to live music for the rest of the night. With the exception of the main stage, all the acts are open to general admission, which makes the listening experience so fun— you can pop in and out of different performances all day long.

We ended the night singing along to “easy” by the Commodores at the packed Uline Warehouse stage and couldn’t have imagined a more perfect end to our Summerfest experience. The day was a smashing success, we made a million family memories, and already can’t wait to return next year— and definitely with the whole family again!