Festivals
Charlie Walker
Co-founder and partner, C3 Presents
460,000+
Attendance at Lollapalooza Chicago, produced by C3 Presents
2025
Block Club Chicago reported that C3 Presents told city council Lollapalooza drew more than 460,000 attendees over its four days in 2025. It counts festival attendance for the company Walker co-founded and partners in, not personal income.
Source: Block Club Chicago — Lollapalooza Raked In $480 Million For Chicago In 2025 — Biggest Impact Ever For Fest (retrieved 2026-09-16)
Hero metrics are sourced, person-specific measures of live-music economic footprint. Company metrics are labelled as company metrics; no synthetic score is used.
C3 Presents co-founder and partner, involved in the development and global expansion of one of the most influential festival portfolios in live music.
Last updated 2026-09-13
In short
Charlie Walker is Co-founder and partner at C3 Presents. Partner in the company that produces Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits Music Festival and exported the format internationally. Charlie Walker is a co-founder and partner of C3 Presents.
Quick facts
- Current role
- Co-founder and partner
- Organisation
- C3 Presents
- Primary category
- Festivals
- Known for
- Co-founding C3 Presents; Lollapalooza's development and international editions; Austin City Limits Music Festival
Executive summary
Charlie Walker is a co-founder and partner of C3 Presents. Pollstar's 2026 Impact 50 recognises him together with Charles Attal and Amy Corbin, which is how the company's leadership is consistently described in the trade record — a partnership, not a single-founder business.
C3's portfolio is the reason the partnership matters. Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits Music Festival are among the largest recurring events in American live music, and the Lollapalooza format has been extended internationally. Walker's documented role sits in the development and expansion of that portfolio.
As with his partners, his current position is as a partner in a company that now operates within the Live Nation group. Live Index records that corporate context without restating it as personal ownership of any festival.
Why Charlie Walker matters in live music
Festival expansion is a distinct skill from promotion. Taking a single-city event and making it repeatable in other countries requires licensing, local partnership and production standardisation, and only a handful of American companies have done it at scale.
That work is directly relevant to Live Index's festival research, which tracks how many large events survive, who owns them, and what happens to an independent event once a corporate group acquires it.
Career record
- CurrentCo-founder and partner of C3 Presents, per Pollstar's 2026 Impact 50 entry.
- CareerInvolved in the development and international expansion of the company's festival portfolio, including Lollapalooza.
Sphere of influence
Levels are categorical — Core, Major, Significant, Limited — and each is stated with the evidence it rests on. No numeric score is published, because none would be defensible.
- Festivals Core
- Partner in the company producing Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits Music Festival.
- International expansion Major
- The Lollapalooza format has been extended to international editions during his tenure as partner.
- Concert promotion Significant
- C3 Presents promotes shows in addition to producing festivals.
- Ticketing Limited
- No ticketing platform ownership is documented in the cited sources.
Entity relationships
Current
Charlie Walker co-founded and is a partner in C3 Presents.
Charlie Walker co-founded C3 Presents with Charles Attal.
Charlie Walker is a partner in the company that produces Lollapalooza.
Charlie Walker is a partner in the company that produces Austin City Limits Music Festival.
Charlie Walker is a partner in a company within the group of Live Nation Entertainment.
Timeline
- CareerCo-founded C3 Presents.
- CareerFestival portfolio developed and extended internationally.
- 2026Recognised in Pollstar's Impact 50 with his C3 partners.
Related Live Index research and records
References and sources
- 2026 Impact 50 honourees: Charles Attal, Amy Corbin and Charlie Walker — Pollstar. Trade press. Retrieved 2026-09-13.Cited for: States his role as co-founder and partner of C3 Presents. Portrait source page.