Comedy Central has chosen San Francisco as the setting for an inaugural weekend comedy festival, in collaboration with the team behind Outside Lands, to bring Kevin Hart, Jerry Seinfeld, Bill Burr and others to outdoor stages in Civic Center Plaza near City Hall.

The June 2-4 event, called the Colossal Clusterfest, is expected to host around 30,000 ticket-holding comedy fans per day from Friday to Sunday, with a main stage on Fulton Street east of Civic Center Plaza, a second stage across the street from City Hall, and multiple spaces inside the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium.

“It was really obvious to us that San Francisco was the place to launch this,” said Jonathan Mayers, co-founder of Superfly, which co-produces the Outside Lands music festival with Another Planet Entertainment, which also operates the Bill Graham Auditorium. “Not only given the great success we’ve had with Outside Lands ... but the history of comedy in San Francisco, going back to Mort Sahl and Lenny Bruce getting their starts there, and just the spirit of counterculture and how that really lends itself to comedy.”

Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival, launched in 2008, brought Radiohead, LCD Soundsystem and Lionel Richie to Golden Gate Park last year, and will return this Aug. 11-13 after the Clusterfest debut.

Colossal Clusterfest is a first for Comedy Central, which has been a frequent contributor to festivals, but nothing this big and concentrated, with so much of their own content being showcased. Chris Hardwick, star of the channel’s “@midnight,” will appear, hosting a live special on Comedy Central on Sunday during the final day of the festival.

Among the Clusterfest’s interactive touches: a “South Park” world that re-creates that show’s Chili Con Carnival, and an “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” world that replicates that sitcom’s centerpiece set, Paddy’s Pub.

Others on the lineup include comics Sarah Silverman, Fred Armisen, Bob Odenkirk, Tig Notaro and Hannibal Buress and musical acts Tegan and Sara, Ice Cube, Chromeo and Preservation Hall Jazz Band. Comic/musician hybrids including Reggie Watts and the Prince tribute band Princess (featuring actress Maya Rudolph) are also scheduled.

Tickets for the three-day festival go on sale at 10 a.m. Thursday, March 2, via www.clusterfest.com, with a weekend-long ticket starting at $199.50.

Comedy Central President Kent Alterman said Clusterfest is a comedy-driven festival with live musical performances, in the same way that Outside Lands is music-focused and features comedy, and that there wasn’t any better backdrop for such an event.

“I don’t know if you’re aware how many comedy specials have been shot in San Francisco,” Alterman said. “The city is known as having such great, talent-friendly audiences.”

Colossal Clusterfest isn’t the first event to inhabit Civic Center Plaza — a BMX bike and skateboard fest closed down the plaza, with some controversy, in 2013. The celebration for the 100th anniversary of City Hall in 2015 also covered similar ground. But those events were free to the public.

“It’s been a thorough process working with all the agencies — working with the mayor’s office, working with Parks and Rec,” Mayers said. “They were really excited about this concept. I think the city and parks realize the value of the shared experience.”

City plans provided by the Recreation and Parks Department show that parts of Civic Center Plaza and nearby streets will be closed in phases between May 29 when the loading begins and June 6 when it ends, but the public spaces will be accessible for most of that time. Records show the city will receive a $207,600 fee from festival organizers, plus tens of thousands more to cover staff time and ground restoration.

The city department’s spokeswoman Connie Chan said the department worked to keep the area “as open as possible throughout the event.”

“We are thrilled that Comedy Central and Superfly are launching its very first comedy festival in San Francisco’s Civic Center Plaza,” Chan said. “We want to continue to activate this area with arts and cultural events and to highlight its historic significance as our city’s” civic center.

The Colossal Clusterfest replicates the Outside Lands mission of getting local businesses involved, with local food vendors to be announced. A dollar from each ticket sale will go to local nonprofits Downtown Streets Team, Larkin Street Youth and Tenderloin Museum.

The event is unlike SF Sketchfest, which takes place for several weeks each January and February in dozens of venues across the city, but Mayers said the group will be involved with Clusterfest as well. Sketchfest has co-curated the Outside Lands comedy stage in recent years.

Clusterfest plans to have an eclectic vibe throughout, with a focus on exploration. The “Seinfeld” world on Grove Street, for example, will re-create the show’s apartment, and feature “the world’s largest Festivus celebration.” Comedy Central will host its “comics to watch” showcase during the festival, and several podcasts will be recorded.

“We’re really trying to provide a way that people can have a sense of discovery … and we want to hit different genres so it’s not just stand-up, but sketch and improv, and all the way down to podcasting,” Alterman said. “We really want it to be a really multimedia, multi-experimental type of event.”

Peter Hartlaub is The San Francisco Chronicle’s pop culture critic. Email: phartlaub@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @PeterHartlaub

Buy tickets

Colossal Clusterfest tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. Thursday, March 2. More information at www.clusterfest.com.