Vancouver’s PNE has unveiled the headliners for its Summer Nights concert series, as the annual fair looks to reverse a trend of declining attendance.

This will be the first year musical acts take the stage at the PNE’s new 10,000-seat amphitheatre, which is slated to open for the upcoming 2026 FIFA World Cup.

Last year, the PNE recorded just over 612,000 visitors, the fewest in the 21st century outside of the peak pandemic period of 2020 to 2022.

PNE officials attributed some of last year’s decline to construction of the amphitheatre itself, which significantly affected fairground operations.

“Our whole site has been under construction and we haven’t been able to have our full fair footprint again,” PNE creative director Patrick Roberge told CBC News.

“We are so excited because we have Summer Nights concerts in a brand new theatre [and] the Pacific Coliseum, the Agrodome, all of our buildings are back online and we’ve got a great lineup coming.”

Roberge said the fair is unveiling its lineup in batches of five acts at a time, with the first group revealed on Tuesday.

It is a mixture of new and nostalgic acts that includes rockers Blue Rodeo, the Guess Who, and the Beaches, rapper Nelly, and electronic dance music artist Zedd.

Organizers hope the combination of the new facility and the lineup of acts will draw fans.

“Vancouver has been begging for an outdoor amphitheatre like this since Expo 86,” Roberge said.

“Expo Theatre was the last time Vancouver had an outdoor … purposely-built amphitheatre, and so we’re finally there 40 years later.”

Attendance at the PNE has fallen by about 40 per cent from its peak between the 1970s and 1990s, when the event would regularly draw more than a million people per season.

The base price for adult admission to the fair, not including rides, food or other paid attractions, rose from $6 to $25 between 2000 and 2025.

This year, tickets to the Summer Nights concerts start at $49, and include admission to the fair.

Vancouver ticket broker Kingsley Bailey said he was skeptical the PNE lineup would meaningfully reverse the fair’s attendance trend given the cost-of-living crunch and ticket prices.

Bailey argued the fair needs headliners with a global profile in the battle to get into consumers’ increasingly squeezed wallets.

“The majority of them are ‘C’ acts at best. And nobody is going to pay money for ‘C’ acts,” he said.

“In this day and age where the dollar is really really hard to keep in your pocket they are not going to say, ‘You know what, this is a brand new amphitheatre, I am going to spend money just to be there,’ If they are going to be there they are going to want … something memorable, that they are going to say, ‘Hey, I was there.'”

Bailey argued the fair could potentially draw a larger crowd with free or discounted concerts.

“They are going to have a lot of people who cannot afford to go to these events and they should be taking advantage of that by offering something to get these people to rally around and enjoy,” Bailey said.

“If you’ve got that many people there they are going to be buying concessions, they are going to be buying food, they are going to be buying souvenirs.”

The PNE is slated to reveal additional batches of performers on Wednesday and Thursday.

Roberge said fairgoers will also be able to take advantage of other entertainment included in the price of admission, such as the Superdogs and Westcoast Lumberjack Show.

New this year will be performances including the Wizard of Oz on Ice and the British Columbia Tattoo, a “large-scale indoor spectacle that brings together military bands, precision drill teams, pipes and drums, dancers, and cultural performers.”

The PNE runs from Aug. 22-Sept. 7.