You Can Use Tinder's "Festival Mode" To Match With People Going To The Same Concerts

People get thirsty during festival season, and I’m not just talking about the lack of available water stations. In honor of the upcoming festival season, Tinder has a new Festival Mode feature that will make it easier for people to match and meet up with other festival goers. (If you felt something, that was just a collective wave of FOMO blasting every Coachella attendee from this year.)

“No longer are your connections limited to your campsite neighbors or whose shoulders you stood on during the headliner’s performance,” an emailed press release for Tinder’s Festival Mode states, “because today Tinder is launching Festival Mode with AEG Worldwide and Live Nation.”

The way it works is relatively seamless with your typical Tinder experience. You’ll opt into “Festival Mode” in the Tinder app and choose the festival you’re attending. Then, a badge highlighting the upcoming festival you’re attending will show up on your profile. “From there, you can check out everyone else going to that festival, so you can match and chat before you make your flower crown,” Tinder’s blog writes.

You read that last line right: you can add the badge to your profile and start swiping on other festival goers before you even make your way to the festival. This is extra good news given the often unreliable WiFi at festivals.

Here are the 12 festivals across the U.S., UK, and Australia that are participating in Tinder’s Festival Mode:

• EDC Las Vegas: 5/17
• Hangout: 5/17
• All Points East (UK): 5/24
• Gov Ball: 5/31
• Parklife (UK): 6/8
• Bonnaroo: 6/13
• Firefly: 6/21
• British Summer Time (UK): 7/5
• Lovebox (UK): 7/12
• Faster Horses: 7/19
• Hard Summer: 8/3
• EDC Orlando: 11/9

If nothing else, maybe you’ll find someone with some hotel floor space you can crash on.

This new Tinder feature comes after the platform’s analysis of last year’s festival-related activity. According to the company’s press release, “Tinder found that in 2018 app registrations during Hangout Fest increased up to 30x and app activity increased up to 300x at Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival.” Yes, that said THREE HUNDRED TIMES. People are really desperate for a Bonnaroo bae.

This increase in app activity was true for pretty much every 2018 festival that their new Festival Mode feature applies to. There was a 36% increase in app registrations at Governor’s ball. App activity increased by more than four times at Firefly Music Festival. At Bonnaroo last year, app registrations increased up to ten times. Perhaps the biggest takeaway is that people have a lot of downtime at festivals.

This festival feature follows the launch of Tinder’s Spring Break Mode, released as part of Tinder’s university-specific sector Tinder U. Released this year, Spring Break Mode was Tinder’s first venture into event-based swiping. It allowed users to add a profile badge for select Spring Break locations (from Cabo to Puerto Rico to Las Vegas to Miami) and find other users who were vacationing in their area. While Spring Break Mode was specifically targeted toward and available to college students, the new Festival Mode will be available to all festival goers.

If you’re looking for someone tall enough to help you get a better stage view, Festival Mode won’t be filtering best on “optimal shoulder height.” In honor of Tinder users’ notorious tendency toward height fishing, Tinder announced a height verification feature this year on April 1. As you may have assumed, this was just an April Fools joke. As an update to the Height Verification page reads, “While we aren’t really verifying height, we encourage all Tinder users to be honest and keep an open mind while on the app.”

Happy swiping, everyone.