Rising new female-led alternative music festival taking over Toronto this weekend
Published October 2, 2026 at 2:19 pm
Big festivals take place in Toronto all the time, but a new one has been on the rise over the past few years and is taking over the city this weekend.
Project Nowhere champions local alternative music in Toronto and takes place across multiple days and multiple venues. This year will be its fourth edition.
Project Nowhere was founded by Juliana Carlevaris of the local Toronto band Hot Garbage, who has attended and played music festivals around the world and has a ton of Toronto pride.
“She saw the need to carve out a space for show-hopping for alternative music, with the artist experience at the forefront, knowing the Toronto community would thrive, giving the talented local artists the opportunity to express themselves, and connect the greater music world with what’s happening right here, right now,” Project Nowhere director of communications and artist’s liaison Desiree Das Gupta tells yourcitywithIN.com.
Das Gupta plays in local bands Kali Horse and ROY, director of operations Matt King plays in bands Absolutely Free and Newfound Interest in Connecticut (amongst others), and technical director Niki Prekop techs for Canadian artists around the world. Anya Miller (the artist formerly known as Peeling) will debut her ambient project Meditation Tapes at this year’s Project Nowhere, at Ambient Temple at Girlfraud Gallery.
The whole team has over 10 years of experience in the music industry and has either worked, or still works, at music venues in Toronto.
Over just four years, Project Nowhere has changed a lot, with one of its venues, Expo 1974, even shutting down wholesale. However, they’ve added venues Mod Club, Houndstooth and Girlfraud Gallery, and continue to include the DJ scene with events at club Bambi’s. Over those years, the number of artists participating has doubled, from around 40 to over 80.
“The growth has been sustainable but noticeable over the four years,” says Das Gupta. “We cannot thank our ever-growing staff enough for becoming part of this dream.”
Post-punk, female-forward local Toronto band Flake participated in the festival for the first time on its opening night, taking the stage at The Baby G on Dundas West.
“The lineup is unbelievable. A bunch of badass ladies on this night,” Flake lead singer Kalyn Kleiser tells yourcitywithIN.com. “We got to be on the same bill as, like, Death. That’s cool.”
Kleiser is referring to a band called Death, which is also the name of a documentary centred on the punk group, screening at Toronto art house cinema Revue as part of the Project Nowhere festival. The band has roots in the origins of punk that stretch back to 1970s Detroit
“World News played the inaugural Project Nowhere four years ago, but we’ve both attended the festival as punters every year since then. This year, we’re playing on the Saturday at lower St. Anne’s Hall, and it marks exactly one year to the day we released our debut album,” Qu Mi of band World News tells yourcitywithIN.com.
“The festival is run by an amazing group of predominantly women, who have become tastemakers within the local scene, blending an impressive array of local and international groups into the programming. Every year they seem to level up. Last year was the first time they had this cool mobile app people can download to plan their route. Project Nowhere is a multi-venue festival in west downtown Toronto, and there’s a lot of show hopping you can do. This year we notice they’ve doubled down on the app and it looks sick.”
It’s clear that the well-oiled machine that is Project Nowhere has no plans of slowing down, but Toronto will just have to wait to see what’s in store for future years of the fest.
“We’re not quite ready to reveal what we have up our sleeves for now, but just know we’re forever plotting, hoping, emailing, and imagining the next version of Nowhere,” says Das Gupta.