Festivals are an important part of popular culture and have increased in popularity in recent decades. However, they remain relatively unexplored in the accounting literature, and understanding of the use of management control tools in this context is low. This study aims to investigate the use of budgets in festivals. Informed by upper echelons theory, it investigates how individual and observable characteristics of festival managers are associated with variations in the use of budgets. The study is based on a survey of 61 festival managers from 40 festivals. The findings suggest that festival budgets are particularly important in the planning and coordination process but used less frequently for ex post evaluations. The findings also indicate a positive association between a business educational background and the use of budgets for most purposes, with the exceptions of performance evaluation and reward. This paper contributes to the literature on accounting in popular culture in general and in festivals specifically. Through its application of upper echelons theory, it also contributes to the management accounting and control literature, showing how individual characteristics of managers influence the use of budgets
