I just got back from Roskilde Festival, Denmark’s biggest festival with about 130 thousand attendees. This is more than two percent of Denmark’s population. Starting out much smaller and with only alternative music, it has broadened its scope and now has anything from very big international names (this year for example Lizzo and Lil Nas X) to niche techno and heavy metal and genres not at all common in Denmark like a random Brazilian samba act or similar. Something for nearly everyone.
So yeah, big deal. It’s also a week long, easy to attend “for free” if you volunteer with something there which lots of people do and has so much of a niche subculture around it.
15 comments
We got Rock Werchter in Belgium. (Last day today) with 88.000 people every day for 4 days. Most of the artists are mainstream musicians. A lot of big names playing at Roskilde also play at Werchter.
And we also have Tomorrowland.
Opener festival in Poland. Used to be a cool thing, not it’s like a polish Coachella, super overpriced, there was some drama this year that you had to pay them
900zl (~200€) to be a volunteer and they would return your money if you “did a good job” but did not define what does that mean.
The biggest concentrated festival looks to be Zwarte Cross which last year drew a total of just under 230.000 guests over the course of a weekend.
It’s part music festival part motor cross event held in the rural parts of the country in the east so it’s a very different vibe to other major festivals. It features a lot of Dutch artists and alternative or party music more so than famous international pop artists.
But if you have a looser definition of festival there’s also the Amsterdam Dance Event for EDM whose events are spread out over more than a hundred locations in and around the city and drew 450.000 guests last year. Brings in all the major DJs and EDM acts although it helps that a significant percentage of them are Dutch.
Probably Download (Metal) or Glastonbury (er, a bit of everything) for the UK, I’d say. Also got T in the Park in Scotland and Reading and Leeds, also in England.
Not sure what we actually have here in Wales!
Alive is the biggets annual festival in terms of crowds. It’s kinda of a big deal, since it’s the only festival that broadcasts some of the concerts (last year was Metallica). Bi-annual it’s Rock in Rio Lisboa, it drags even bigger crowds than Alive.
If you ask for the festival in Germany with the most visitors, then Bochum Total with about half a million guests.
Bochum Total is a free festival, not like Roskilde Festival or Copenhell where you have to buy a ticket, there are also more “smaller” bands playing. It’s more, having a good time together with some music outside, some people just come for one day, some for the hole festival. There are countless stages playing pop, rock, electro or rap, etc. Bochum Total starts in a few days.
Definitely Summer Sound, takes place in Liepāja each year. Last years attendance was 40k, but comparing it to population of Latvia (1.8 mil) its big. Had tons of fun, I already have tickets for this year.
I went to Pohoda in Slovakia last year and loved it. Slovaks in general were so cool, but the festival itself was incredibly impressive. Really wanted to go back this year but the lineup is pretty rubbish for some reason.
The biggest is Westman island summer festival.
The competing second and third are I never went South and I never went West.
They are bitter rivals always competing in popularity.
But the Westman Islands are in the south so we win, just don’t tell the westerners that, they will stab you 😅
By far the biggest music festival in Hungary is Sziget.
It’s also a week long, tickets are kind of expensive and over 500 thousand people attend. It’s by far the most internationally known festival in the country.
There are some smaller ones too mainly visited by Hungarians like Hegyalja, VOLT, Balaton Sound and SZIN.
Metaldays. It brings in about 12-15k people. It’s a big deal locally, since this is the number of people in a reasonably sized Slovene city. Traditionally it had been held in Tolmin with camping very close to Soča river, and it is easily still one of the prettiest festival sites out there. However the municipality decided to only allow festivals up to 5k people starting this year, and Metaldays moved to Velenje. Judging from experience of early Tolmin festivals, they have no idea what awaits them. The site is much more urban, but the lake is great, I have high hopes for this year.
For France I’d say it’s hellfest. It attract 240k people over 4 days at some place around Nantes.
Typically, you’ll get blues, rock, metal type of music, and the ambiance is pretty good and chill out.
In Austria the biggest is Nova Rock, with around 220.000 visitors, the second largest is Electric Love Festival with around 180.000.
If you count solely visitor numbers, then Donauinselfest ist the largest, with around 2,5 Mio. visitors each year, BUT the festival is totally free and therefore a ton of people visit.
The most famous are likely Wacken and Rock am Ring/Rock am Park, they’re not the most visited however since the organizers purposefully limit the amount of cards available due to safety reasons, otherwise they’d likely be the biggest
The largest festival in Sweden, by a large margin, is Sweden Rock Festival. Focus is on Rock (naturally) and Metal.
There used to be larger mixed festivals, similar to Roskilde, but the most iconic ones (like Hultsfredsfestivalen) have gone bankrupt.