How Registration Works

For those of you returning to XOXO, this will all be very familiar. For those of you who have never attended, here’s how registration works and the timeline for distributing passes. Short version:

1. On Tuesday, May 21, we’ll announce the launch lineup for XOXO 2024 and open registration.

2. You’ll have eight days to fill out the registration survey — ending at 12pm PT/3pm ET on Wednesday, May 29.

3. Shortly after, passes will be randomly distributed to attendees from approved surveys.

Anyone wanting to attend XOXO must fill out their own unique survey, including partners and significant others.

Timeline and Passes

This year, you’ll have eight days to fill out the registration survey, beginning Tuesday, May 21 and ending on Wednesday, May 29 at 12pm PT/3pm ET. There’s no need to rush, and no advantage to submitting your survey early.

Once registration closes, attendees will be chosen at random by the lottery and will be sent a link via email to buy a pass. You’ll have a guaranteed 48 hour window to complete your registration and purchase a pass, after that time it will be released to another attendee.

An XOXO pass costs $250 and gets you access to everything on our schedule: our Conference, Sideshow and our other festival events, and all meetups and parties. XOXO passes are non-refundable and non-transferable.

Everyone attending XOXO is required to agree to and abide by our COVID policy and Code of Conduct.

How Surveys Work

We ask you to fill out a short survey with three simple questions:

1. What do you do?

2. What are you working on right now?

3. What’s something you’ve made that you’re proud of?

In addition, we ask if you identify with any group that is typically underrepresented at events like XOXO, and whether you plan to attend with a partner or significant other. Anyone wanting to attend XOXO must fill out their own unique survey, including partners and significant others.

This survey isn’t an application, we’re not judging or ranking you based on your answers. We use these responses to answer a simple question: is this someone who makes things, or builds tools to help people make things? Artists and creators of any kind are immediately approved.

Why Surveys?

We originally implemented our survey system to screen out people who were looking to take advantage of XOXO and its audience, namely companies and agencies who wanted to show up at XOXO to pitch or sell you something instead of participating in the festival.

Over time, we also began considering surveys from attendees from underrepresented or marginalized backgrounds in the lottery process, and we added the ability to link surveys so partners and families could attend together. Managing registration like this also allows us to maintain a blacklist of former attendees who were removed for violating our Code of Conduct.

Each year, we hear criticism from people who see our survey system as exclusionary or elitist, arguing that an open door system for registration would be more fair. In our experience, the opposite is true. A first-come, first-serve system typically favors those with time and money, which ends up benefiting those with well paying jobs and disposable income.

Our survey and lottery process allows us to counter some of these biases, prioritizing access to the festival to a much more diverse group of independent artists and creators, and allowing many more new people to attend each year. It’s a little extra effort for everyone involved, but we’ve found it to be an incredibly powerful tool to ensure that the festival reflects the diverse and vibrant creative communities it was created to celebrate.