Roskilde Festival

The Roskilde Festival is the largest music festival in Northern Europe and one of the largest events of its kind in Europe. It held annually near the city of Roskilde, Denmark. Founded in 1971, it has hosted performances by world class musicians and bands including Bob Marley and The Wailers, U2, Metallica, Radiohead, Santana, Leonard Cohen, and others.

The Roskilde Festival was founded in 1971 by two high school students, Jesper Switzer Møller and Mogens Sandfær, and promoter Carl Fischer. They took inspiration from youth gatherings and festivals such as Woodstock, Isle of Wight and the Newport Jazz Festival. Originally named the Sound Festival, it encompassed different genres including rock, jazz, folk and pop. The inaugural festival featured about 20 bands playing on a single stage and lasted for two days, attracting about 10,000 attendees each day.

Since 1972, the festival has been organized by the Roskilde Festival Charity Society, a non-profit organization that aims to support music, culture and humanism. What started as a rather poorly managed but very enthusiastic music festival has grown to become a major music event with several stages and over 130,000 visitors.

The Roskilde Festival encompasses an impressive variety of music genres including, but not limited to alternative rock, psychedelic rock, punk rock, heavy metal, pop, synthpop, reggae, hip hop, indie, folk, World music, EDM (electronic dance music), and many more. The organizers invite both internationally renowned artists and up-and-coming musicians. For emerging performers, the Roskilde Festival is a great platform to find new audiences.

Until the mid-1990s, the Roskilde Festival attracted mainly guests from Scandinavia. Today, it is popular among mainstream youth from all over Europe. The festival is constantly growing. For example, the 2013 edition featured over 180 bands and was attended by some 130,000 music lovers. Along with 3,000 artists, 5,000 journalists and over 21,000 volunteers helping to run the event, the 2013 Roskilde Festival was attended by a total of about 160,000 people.

The Roskilde Festival usually starts on the last Thursday in June or the first Thursday in July and runs over four days preceded by a four-day warm-up. The warp-up days at the festival campsite, which covers nearly 80 hectares, are filled with improvised performances, jam sessions and parties. During the festival concerts take place on several stages with a capacity varying from 1,200 to over 60,000. The festival traditionally opens with a performance by a Scandinavian band on the main stage called the Orange Stage.

One of the festival’s most unusual traditions is the annual naked run around the campsite organized by the Roskilde Festival Radio. Two winners (one male and one female) receive a ticket for the next year’s festival. In the past few years, the naked run has become so popular that the organizers have to arrange qualifier events for the male participants.