Highwater Show Hall in PEI to Become Atlantic Canada's Largest Open-Air Music Venue

PEI’s concert scene is about to get a big boost.

Whitecap Entertainment has revealed that it will be opening a new concert venue, Highwater Show Hall, in Cavendish, Prince Edward Island this summer. The venue can host up to 1,800 concertgoers, making it the biggest open air concert venue in Atlantic Canada.

The venue is set to make its debut through a phased launch this summer, being used for select shows and events during Cavendish Beach Music Festival and Sommo Festival, both of which are run by Whitecap Entertainment.

Both festivals already welcome massive names — including stars like Taylor Swift, Noah Kahan and Chris Stapleton over the years — and crowds of more than 80,000 people annually, but Highwater Show Hall will give the area a more permanent destination for live music. It becomes the first dedicated and permanent mid-sized venue on Prince Edward Island. After the two festivals this summer, the venue will launch a full concert season from May to October 2027.

“We've spent nearly two decades proving that world-class live music belongs on Prince Edward Island,” said Ben Murphy, CEO of Whitecap Entertainment. “Highwater Show Hall is the next evolution of that vision. It creates a permanent home for live entertainment in Cavendish, giving touring artists another opportunity to come to the East Coast and offers Maritime audiences the shows they've been asking for; not just during festival season, but all summer long.”

Speaking to Billboard Canada as Executive of the Week in April, Murphy revealed that getting artists to play in eastern Canada was one of the biggest challenges of booking music on PEI.

"Tours and shows often stop in the Toronto, Montreal area and don't come further east," he said. "In Toronto, you can go to six shows a week, maybe more, and you all see your favorite acts all the time. Here, it's a little more rare. Fans are excited when it does happen. The connection is genuine. Musicians can feel that. They come out here and they rave about the crowds... There's absolutely an opportunity to create new fans here. There’s close to 2 million people in Atlantic Canada."

The new venue will give artists more of a a chance to tour to Prince Edward Island outside of the festival circuit.

"I've been booking bands in Canada for 40+ years and rarely do they get to play PEI. The proposed Highwater Show Hall would be a game changer in that it's the right capacity for the majority of my roster,” says Ralph James, senior vice president of Paquin Artists Agency.

This year’s Cavendish Beach Music Festival runs from July 9-11 with Tucker Wetmore, HARDY, Cody Johnson and more. Sommo takes over Cavendish from Sept. 10-11 with Sombr, Twenty One Pilots, Natasha Bedingfield and others.