The final Preakness Stakes at the old Pimlico Race Course will also include a much more slimmed down infield experience.

In a break with what has become a staple of the race since 2009, organizers will not host a traditional music festival within the racetrack’s oval. Instead of a large stage crowded by concertgoers, a stage, stationed elsewhere in the infield, will face toward the grandstand. Organizers have not yet shared which artists will perform.

“Featured performances will occur during the live broadcast between races, and will cap off Preakness day with closing sets immediately following the races,” Tiffani Steer, vice president of communications for 1/ST, the race organizer, said in a statement to The Baltimore Banner.

There will still be infield revelry — a tradition that goes back even farther than the concerts — though it will be smaller than usual.

Fans can purchase infield tickets for an event billed as being “hosted” by Ravens legend Ray Lewis, which includes unlimited beer and wine.

As opposed to the music festival, which took place out in the open, the infield party will be in a 22,000 square-foot covered tent and accommodate about 3,000 people, significantly fewer than at the festival in the past. The Baltimore Business Journal first reported the smaller infield crowd.

The goal of relocating the stage, Steer said, is to create “an immersive and connected live performance viewable from the Grandstand.” The “redesigned stage” will be stationed to the north of the cupola where the Woodlawn Vase is presented to the connections of the Preakness winner.

The Stronach Group, a Canadian company doing business as 1/ST, has long operated the Preakness. However, now that the state of Maryland has taken over the industry and installed a nonprofit operator, 1/ST is on its way out.

It will run the Preakness this year and next, when the event takes place at Laurel Park as a new Pimlico is built, before the nonprofit takes over operation of the Preakness.

For many years, attendees packed into the infield for a 1/ST-scheduled music festival that felt like it just so happened to take place while horses sprinted nearby.

It created an odd dichotomy of racing and music fans, but contributed to huge crowds: More than 140,000 people attended the Preakness in 2017, for example. Attendance has waned in the post-pandemic years.

It remains to be seen whether the traditional music festival will ultimately return to the Preakness down the road, once the nonprofit, which has adopted the historic Maryland Jockey Club name, takes over the race at a rebuilt Pimlico.

The other jewels of the Triple Crown — the Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes — do not host infield concerts. Then again, the middle jewel has long been considered the rowdiest of the trio.

Known for years as “the people’s race,” the Preakness drew especially massive crowds in the 1990s as partygoers wheeled in their own alcohol to the beer-soaked infield. The policy allowing outside alcohol stopped in 2009, the same year a musical act, ZZ Top, first played a concert on race day, beginning a tradition.

Preakness has almost always been a money maker — the event earned about $9 million in 2016 — but that hasn’t been the case recently. Despite high-powered (and high-priced) acts, Preakness has dipped into the red. In 2022, when Megan Thee Stallion and the Chainsmokers headlined the weekend, the event lost $3 million. When Bruno Mars performed in 2023, it lost $2 million.

That trend is something the new Maryland Jockey Club, headed by president Bill Knauf, will seek to reverse in order to keep racing in the state afloat.

Each of the next few Preakness weekends will be unique. This year’s event will be without the typical infield festival and is also the final one at Old Hilltop, a nickname for Pimlico that has only grown more apt with age.

Shortly after the weekend, excavators and wrecking balls will begin to demolish the dilapidated track and attempt a speedy, 22-month rebuild.

The 2026 race will be run at Laurel Park — its first time away from Pimlico since 1908. Then, as long as construction proceeds as planned, the race will return to a brand new Pimlico in 2027, which is expected to cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars.

The new, state-created nonprofit took over Maryland racing beginning January 1, although its parent body, the Maryland Thoroughbred Racetrack Operating Authority, has yet to install a board of directors. The authority, which was created in 2023 to provide stability to racing for several years, was abruptly dissolved by statehouse leaders this month.

Beginning in 2027, 1/ST will receive roughly $5 million annually from the newly formed Maryland Jockey Club for the rights to operate the Preakness Stakes. Aside from receiving that revenue, 1/ST will be uninvolved in the event.

That leaves the Maryland Jockey Club with the challenging task of breaking even on operating racing in the state — while paying several million for the intellectual property of Preakness.

Separate from infield activities coordinated by 1/ST, the City of Baltimore and the state of Maryland are ramping up their outlay in an attempt to revitalize the week of Preakness going forward.

Each is financing, alongside private businesses, a festival in the lead-up to the race that includes D-Nice & Friends playing a ticketed concert at Pier Six Pavilion on the Wednesday before Preakness.