Artists perform at the 2025 BreakOut West in Winnipeg Manitoba. (Provided by Breakout West)

BreakOut West is returning to Victoria this October for the first time in more than a decade, bringing artists, music industry professionals and fans from across Western Canada together for four days of performances, networking and professional development.

Unlike most music festivals, BreakOut West changes its host city each year, giving different communities across Western Canada an opportunity to host the event. Last year, the event was hosted in Winnipeg.

Liam Prost is event coordinator for BreakOut West (Tamarack Records)

Liam Prost, event coordinator for the 2026 BreakOut West festival and conference, gives details.

“It's kind of one of the goofier things about our event is that it moves to a different city every year. So always a little bit different, always keeping people on their toes. But yeah, basically as far of a swing geographically as we will ever do is going from Winnipeg to going to Victoria.”

While the festival offers live performances, Prost says BreakOut West is equally focused on helping emerging artists build their careers in the music industry.

“We really wanna make sure, because there's such a breadth of amazing artists from Western Canada, that we represent artists that are kind of export ready. So there's just such great art, but we wanna make sure that our event is both a great festival full of great artists, but also it's a professional development opportunity like a showcase with a conference attached to it.”

Prost explains that artists are selected through a jury process that considers both artistic quality and whether performers are at a stage in their careers where they can benefit from the networking opportunities provided at BreakOut West.

“We get this kind of big slate of selections, and we kind of go through a jury process to make sure that every artist that submit is listened to by several sets of ears, and that people from different sides of the industry are looking at where they're at and making the selections on that basis. And then we try to select a breadth of genre, a breadth of geography as well, just because BreakOut West represents the whole region, so we wanna make sure we've got from BC, we've got artists that are from the island as well as they're from the mainland or they're from the interior. We wanna have a certain amount of artists every year from all of the provinces.”

In addition to showcasing artists from British Columbia, the event brings in musicians from Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba; the festival also includes performers from the Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut. Prost says organizers work to ensure the lineup reflects the diversity of Western Canada's music scene.

“We want a breadth of genre. We really want a breadth of different kinds of backgrounds of artists, different diasporic communities, different kinds of styles of performance, different genders, different races, and different kinds of cultural alignments.”

Beyond the performances, BreakOut West attracts music industry delegates from around the world, creating opportunities for artists to build relationships with managers, agents, booking representatives and festival organizers.

“So we're looking at kind of key export markets that we're kinda hearing from artists and industry from the region that they're interested in. So we're bringing out folks from the United Kingdom, from Germany, and from the Netherlands. This year we're focusing on delegates from Mexico, which is the fastest-growing music market in the world. We're really trying to provide access to industry who has the capability and capacity to start working with developing artists like the ones that we're showcasing at the event,” said Prost.

The connections built at BreakOut West have led to career-changing opportunities for artists in previous years. Prost points to singer-songwriter William Prince from the Peguis First Nation in Manitoba, who built much of his early professional team following his BreakOut West showcase in 2017, and Winnipeg artist Amos the Kid, whose performance at the 2024 BreakOut West event led to a tour in Germany last year.

This year's event will introduce a new award, the Meridian Prize, “recognizing an album of exceptional artistic achievement from Western and Northern Canada.”

“ We just really wanted to recognize some of these great albums, and find a kind of new way to celebrate this great art that provides a different type of incentive. Breakout West is so much about commercial success and finding a team and showing off the successes that you've had. But the Meridian Prize is really about recognizing a piece of art, like an album whose artistic vision is really kind of fully realized within itself,” said Prost.

Hosting the festival in Victoria also provides the city with a valuable opportunity to highlight its diverse music community to visiting industry delegates and artists.

“We'd really love people to come back and reinvest, really play those shows, come back to record. There's so many great producers on the island and some great interesting studios. We're working with Haus of Owl on the SOCAN Song House this year, just an incredible space, and it's so close to our conference hotel. … Yeah, we're really hoping that people will see what's exciting about Victoria, and be able to come back and reinvest,” said Prost.

For music fans, Prost expresses that the festival offers a unique chance to discover artists before they reach larger audiences and fame.

“So if you're a music fan, I don't know, somebody in Nanaimo who listens to CHLY and really loves music, loves to discover music, you can come out to the festival and see 50 different bands over the course of three days, of a variety of genres from all over the region. And ideally, some of this stuff you're gonna see now and then two or three years later when it comes back and sells out the Capitol Ballroom, you'll have been there first, and you'll know all the songs.”

BreakOut West runs in Victoria this fall, from September 30th to October 4th, featuring live performances, conferences and the Western Canadian Music Awards. To learn more, visit breakoutwest.ca.

Funding Note: This story was produced with funding support from Canada Summer Jobs, and our supporters. Support our nonprofit newsroom with a donation today.

Newsroom Ethics • About our Newsroom • Report an Error • Corrections & Clarifications