Charli XCX dominated the 2025 BRIT Awards, picking up five honours including Album of the Year, Artist of the Year and Song of the Year (for Guess ft. Billie Eilish).

The CAA-represented singer-songwriter also won the fan-voted Dance Act and BRITs Songwriter of the Year, which had been announced earlier this week.

“CAA couldn’t be happier to see Charli recognised in this way following a stand-out year where Charli flew the flag for British music around the globe,” says the agency in a statement to IQ. “Charli has always been a special pioneering artist, so the five BRIT wins – ten years into her career is fully deserved and I’m sure she is just getting started. Congratulations to her and the whole team.”

Saturday night’s ceremony at The O2 in London was broadcast in primetime on ITV and ITVX, and streamed on YouTube for fans outside of the UK. Performers included Sabrina Carpenter, Teddy Swims, Sam Fender, JADE, Ezra Collective with special guest Jorja Smith, Lola Young, The Last Dinner Party and Rising Star winner Myles Smith.

“I’m delighted that Charli was recognised on the biggest stage, she has had a phenomenal year and it’s only right she comes away with the accolades to match”

Other award winners included JADE (Pop Act), Sam Fender (Alternative/Rock Act), Ezra Collective (Group of the Year), Sabrina Carpenter (BRITs Global Success), Chappell Roan, Good Luck, Babe! (International Song of the Year), Stormzy (Hip-Hop/Grime/Rap Act), Raye (R&B Act), Fontaines D.C. (International Group of the Year), The Last Dinner Party (Best New Artist), Chappell Roan (International Artist of the Year) and A.G. Cook (Producer of the Year).

The evening also included a tribute to the late One Direction star Liam Payne following his death last October. Host Jack Whitehall addressed the audience before a video montage was shown.

The BRITs 2025 was chaired for a third and final year by Damian Christian (MD and president of promotions at Atlantic Records, part of Warner Music UK), who oversaw the BRITs creative team which included set and stage design by Misty Buckley, BRITs TV Executive Producer Sally Wood and BRITs TV Director Phil Heyes. This year’s BRIT award was designed by British-Nigerian multi-disciplinary artist Gabriel Moses.

“I’m delighted that Charli was recognised on the biggest stage, she has had a phenomenal year and it’s only right she comes away with the accolades to match,” adds Christian. “And congratulations to all the winners, nominees and performers. On a personal note, it’s been an honour chairing the BRITs over the last three years, and I hope we’ve done the industry and our artists proud.”

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Charli XCX has announced she will reunite with Troye Sivan for her Primavera Sound Barcelona headline slot next year.

The 5 June performance will be the only European stop on their Charli XCX & Troye Sivan Present: SWEAT tour and follows their sold-out 22-date tour of North America last autumn, which saw the British and Australian artists play to almost 300,000 fans. Both acts performed separately at Primavera this year.

Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter will also headline the 5-7 June 2025 festival at Parc Del Fòrum.

Elsewhere in Spain, Madrid’s Mad Cool has released the first wave of acts for the 2025 edition, led by Olivia Rodrigo, Kings of Leon, Noah Kahan and Gracie Abrams.

Alanis Morissette, Weezer, Benson Boone, Justice, Iggy Pop, Thirty Seconds To Mars, Arde Bogotá, Residente, Glass Animals and St. Vincent are also on the bill. The festival will return to Iberdrola Music between 10–12 July.

Brazil’s The Town has lined up Green Day, Sex Pistols, Bruce Dickinson, Iggy Pop, Initial Capital, Pitty, CPM 22 and Supla & Innocents for 2025.

Organised by Rock in Rio founder Roberto Medina, the 100,000-cap festival will return to São Paulo between 6–7 and 12–14 September.

Portugal’s Nos Alive has announced an additional six acts: Barry Can’t Swim, Dead Poet Society, Finneas, Foster The People, Parov Stelar, Mother Mother and Sammy Virji.

They will perform at the Lisbon festival between 10–12 July and alongside previously announced acts such as Olivia Rodrigo, Kings of Leon, Amyl and The Sniffers, Artemas, Benson Boone, CMAT, girl in red and Glass Animals.

Poland’s Orange Warsaw has announced its first headliner, Charli XCX, who will deliver the final set of the festival.

The Alter Art-promoted event will return to Służewiec Horse Racing Track in Warsaw between 30–31 May.

The US is set to gain another new music festival called Starbase

France’s We Love Green has also secured Charli XCX for a headlining set alongside other acts including Air, Laylow, Gesaffelstein, Amelie Lens, Parcels, FKA Twigs and Bicep.

The festival will once again take place at Bois de Vincennes Park in the 12th arrondissement of Paris, between 6–8 June.

Across Europe, Austria’s Lido Sounds has confirmed Justice, Parcels and PaulWetz for the 2025 instalment, set to take place between 27–29 June on the banks of the Danube in Linz, Vienna.

City Splash – billed as the world’s biggest independent one-day celebration of Caribbean and African culture – will take over London’s Brockwell Park on the 26 May bank holiday.

Set to perform at the event is Jamaican roots reggae singer Tarrus Riley, queen of dancehall Spice, one of Jamaica’s brightest stars Valiant, the voice behind one of Dancehall’s biggest anthems ‘Drift’; Teejay and Afrobeats music collective The Compozers.

Live Nation-owned C3 Presents plans to launch a new rock festival in the US called Boardwalk Rock Festival.

The two-day event will take place between 17–18 May 2025 in Ocean City, Maryland, with some of the biggest names in rock history alongside contemporary favourites.

Def Leppard, Mötley Crüe, Nickelback, and Shinedown will headline the inaugural edition, with Bush, Chevelle, Three Days Grace and Flyleaf appearing further down the bill.

The US is also set to gain another new music festival called Starbase, launched by GRAMMY-nominated electronic music duo SLANDER in partnership with Insomniac.

The two-day event will take place between 25–26 April at Lake Perris in Southern California with more than 35 events.

A Hundred Drums, AU5, Before Dawn, Body Ocean, Bommer, Charles D, Codd Dubz, Control Freak, Copycatt, Dimension, Fairlane, FrostTop, Ivory, Kill the Noise, Lunice, Mha Iri, Moody Good B2B Chee, Nikademis and Pauline Herr are set to perform at the inaugural edition.

Meanwhile, St. Louis natives Nelly & Metro Boomin will launch a festival in their hometown next year featuring a mix of country and hip-hop music.

The festival announcement comes after St. Louis was notably snubbed from Nelly’s upcoming Where the Party At World Tour.

Details of the inaugural Smokin’ Hayride Festival are yet to be announced.

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Primavera Sound Barcelona has unveiled its “all-embracing, eclectic and unparalleled” 2025 lineup, headlined by Charli XCX, Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter.

Hailed by organisers as “the three most important artists of the moment”, the trio are among the first 147 names to be confirmed for the festival’s 23rd edition, which features acts such as FKA Twigs, Haim, LCD Soundsystem, Anohni and the Johnsons, Beabadoobee, Wet Leg and Zaho de Sagazan.

Returning to Parc Del Fòrum from 5-7 June, the gender-balanced bill also includes the likes of Idles, Jamie xx, Beach House Stereolab, Sturgill Simpson, Paul Kalkbrenner, Alan Sparhawk, Caribou, Amaia, DJ Koze, Kim Deal, Armand Van Helden, Turnstile, TV On The Radio, Cat Power, Floating Points, Denzel Curry and Fontaines D.C.

Full festival tickets go on sale on 29 October, cost €295 (€265.50 for Revolut clients), with VIP tickets available for €495 (€445.50).

Primavera co-director Alfonso Lanza, head of press and public relations Marta Pallerès and head of bookings Fra Soler gave an insight into the success of the event in a keynote interview at last month’s International Festival Forum (IFF) in London.

“There’s no secret,” said Soler. “We’re music lovers, we enjoy what we do, and we love to listen to music. So, I think that enables us to get some of the artists before they break through on a global stage. We always take pleasure in discovering and meeting bands, and that’s helped us build lasting relationships with them.

“Some of the headliners played at Primavera before they became headliners for little money, and they appreciate the fact that we spotlighted them from the beginning. And the other thing is we try to avoid super big headliners and create a big gap between them and the rest of the lineup.”

“The effect a gender-balanced lineup has had for us is reflected in our audience demographics”

Pallerès went on to discuss launching the first gender-balanced lineup in 2019.

“No festival of our size had done that before, and it was quite noticeable because we made headlines for it absolutely everywhere that year,” she said. “The effect a gender-balanced lineup has had for us is reflected in our audience demographics, which features a large number of female attendees.”

The promoters also explained the decision to cancel all of the brand’s South American festivals in 2024

“I would rather refer to this as us skipping a year instead of an outright cancellation,” said Soler. “This industry presents a lot of challenges in terms of the lineup you’re aiming for. So, there’s a so-called ‘headliner draft’ which affects every promoter, and when you go to a different territory, there’s a lot of adjustments that need to be made because every territory has a different preference on what they want to listen to.

“We realise it would be a bit damaging, but we always strive to deliver a festival experience that would be up to Primavera’s standards.”

Primavera Sound Porto – the brand’s Portuguese edition – is set for Parque da Cidade from 12-14 June 2025.

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In a Radar Station first, New Jersey-born rapper Coi Leray has topped the chart for the third time in November – and the second time in as many months, following a brief usurpation by Australian drill act OneFour in September.

Speaking to IQ last month, Paradigm’s Mike Malak, who represents Leray together with Alex Hardee, attributed the rapper’s fast-growing popularity to her reworking of the urban genre and unique style.

Leray (pictured), who is signed with Republic Records, got her breakthrough with the single ‘Huddy’ in September 2018, which now has over 3.2 million listens on Spotify. The artist’s latest track, ‘Add It’, was released last month, as Leray prepares for her first headline tour in 2020.

Climbing into silver-medal position is University of San Francisco student 24kGoldn, real name Golden Landis Von Jones, who held third place in last month’s Radar Station. The rapper is playing at Rolling Loud Los Angeles festival on 14 December, which is headlined by the likes of Chance the Rapper, Future and Lil Uzi Vert.

Nasty Cherry, the brainchild of UK singer Charli XCX, come in at third. The female four-piece made waves last month with the release of their six-episode Netflix reality series I’m With the Band: Nasty Cherry, described by the Guardian as “a riotous clash of Big Brother meets Drag Race meets Spice World”.

The Radar Station algorithm calculates the fastest-growing new artists by combining data across a number of online platforms, including Spotify, Instagram, Facebook, Songkick and Last.fm.

See below for a Spotify playlist of last month’s Radar Station top 20, plus the full chart with links to artists’ social pages and contact details.

For more details about the Radar Station, contact [email protected].

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