A group of Miami residents are suing the Ultra Music Festival over accusations that the yearly electronic dance music event violated earlier promises to limit sound levels, inflicting “psychological torture” on neighbors every spring.
Five years after a legal settlement over noise complaints, the Downtown Neighbors Alliance (DNA) says in a Wednesday (April 22) lawsuit that Ultra has “brazenly obliterated” that deal by carrying out a “relentless sonic assault” on residents near the city’s Bayfront Park, including at this year’s festival, which took place last month.
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“The ensuing acoustic bombardment is nothing short of psychological torture, turning downtown Miami into an inescapable warzone of low-frequency bass that violently shakes the foundations of residential towers and actively endangers human sanity,” lawyers for the neighbors write in their complaint, which was obtained by Billboard.
The settlement, reached in 2021 to end an earlier lawsuit, required Ultra to cap noise levels at 95 decibels and monitor sound at the “most vulnerable” locations, the neighbors claim. But the festival has “materially breached” that contract by consistently exceeding those limits, the suit claims, resulting in a “severe degradation of the residents’ quality of life.”
“The apocalyptic noise levels generated by [Ultra] are offensive, annoying, and intolerable to any reasonable person of ordinary sensibilities, creating a severe life-safety hazard and inflicting emotional distress,” the residents’ lawyers write.
The new case was filed a day before Miami’s city commissioners granted Ultra a 20-year approval to continue holding the festival at Bayfront Park. In a response statement to Miami’s WPLG-10, Ultra’s chief administrative officer Ray Martinez said the festival had “complied with all applicable requirements governing sound level” and would “vigorously defend against the lawsuit.”
Ultra did not immediately respond to Billboard‘s request for comment.
“Ultra will continue to act as a responsible neighbor, independent of any formal agreement or arrangement with the DNA or any other resident group, and irrespective of this lawsuit,” Martinez said.
Ultra, launched in 1999 and expanded to a three-day event in 2011, is one of world’s top yearly electronic dance music festivals. The 2026 event last month featured performances by Major Lazer, Swedish House Mafia’s Sebastian Ingrosso and Steve Angello, John Summit, Martin Garrix and Alesso.
But the event spent years battling with DNA, which represents a large group of condominium towers in downtown Miami. The group repeatedly sought to get city commissioners to refuse renewal of Ultra’s approvals to use Bayfront Park, briefly succeeding in 2019 and forcing the festival to relocate to Miami’s Virginia Key before returning the next year. In 2020, the group filed its earlier case over the noise, raising similar complaints.
In 2021, amid a two-year hiatus for the COVID-19 pandemic, Ultra and DNA reached a wide-ranging settlement to resolve their disputes. At the time, a leader of the community group said the deal would “allow Ultra and its neighbors to coexist.”
According to the new lawsuit, that’s not what came to pass. DNA says that at the 2024, 2025 and 2026 editions, Ultra consistently breached the agreement, both by allowing noise levels to exceed the limits and failing to properly monitor sound as required. The group says it has retained acoustic engineers who have issued their own reports showing such violations.
“Defendant’s breaches went beyond mere passive failure to contain the sound,” the group writes. “[Ultra] actively blasted the residents of downtown Miami with an apocalyptic, ear-shattering, and relentless sonic assault.”
In technical legal terms, the lawsuit accuses Ultra of both breach of contract and of common law nuisance — a form of legal wrongdoing in which someone’s conduct causes problems for neighbors or the general public.
