NOS Alive

NOS Alive (formerly known as Optimus Alive!) is an annual music and arts festival held in Oeiras, a municipality in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area and part of the urban agglomeration of Portugal’s capital. Despite having been founded relatively recently, compared to major music festivals, it has become quite popular both in Portugal and abroad.

The inaugural festival was held from June 8–10, 2007 as Oeiras Alive!. It was headlined by internationally renowned bands such as Pearl Jam, The Smashing Pumpkins and Beastie Boys. The line-up also included Blasted Merchanism, Linkin Park, the Used, The White Stripes, Balla, Da Weasel, Donavon Frankenreiter, Matisyahu, and Sam the Kid. Concerts took place on two stages, the Optimus Stage and the Sagres Mini Stage.

The festival is organized by Everything Is New, a major Portuguese concert agency. Its main sponsor is the mobile operator NOS Comunicações (formerly Optimus). Originally named Oeiras Alive!, the festival was renamed Optimus Alive! in 2008. In 2012, Optimus Telecomunicações merged with ZON Multimédia to form NOS Comunicações and the festival was subsequently rebranded as NOS Alive.

NOS Alive runs over three days every summer, typically in June or July. As of 2016, there are four stages at the festival: NOS Stage (main stage reserved for the headliners and international acts), Heineken Stage, NOS Clubbing (dance music), and Jardim Caixa - Comedy Stage (comedy acts). The number of stages varies from year to year. For example, at the 2015 festival where was the NOS Entrance stage for up-and-coming artists which served as a platform for showcasing emerging talent.

Over the years, the NOS Alive music festival has featured a lot of world-class musicians and bands including Arctic Monkeys, The Black Eyed Peas, Bob Dylan, The Chemical Brothers, Coldplay, The Cure, Deftones, Depeche Mode, Faith No More, Foo Fighters, Green Day, Imagine Dragons, Kasabian, Kings of Leon, LMFAO, Metallica, Morcheeba, Muse, Pearl Jam, Placebo, The Prodigy, Radiohead, Rage Against the Machine, Slipknot, Thirty Seconds to Mars, Within Temptation, and more. It encompasses different genres and styles of music, from rock and pop to hip-hop and EDM.