Live Nation GSA announces Download Festival Germany
Live Nation GSA (Germany, Switzerland, Austria) is launching a German edition of Download Festival, the UK’s premiere rock event.
Download Germany will take place on 24 June 2022 at the Hockenheimring, a motor racing circuit situated in the Rhine valley near the town of Hockenheim, which Live Nation GSA head Marek Lieberberg has prior experience with.
Lieberberg’s former company Marek Lieberberg Konzertagentur (MLK) previously held Rock’n’Heim at the same location, in cooperation with Live Nation.
The festival took place annually from 2013 to 2015, welcoming around 40,000 fans across three days for the first two years. In 2015, the event was reduced to a one-day event.
MLK also housed both Rock am Ring and Rock im Park, started by Lieberberg in 1985 and 1993 respectively, the twin festivals that from 2022, will be programmed by eventimpresents and CTS Eventim-owned DreamHaus.
At the time of writing, Download Germany has not announced any artists or released tickets for the 2022 event
At the time of writing, Download Germany has not announced any artists or released tickets for the 2022 event.
Download Germany will be the UK brand’s fourth sister event. Other sites are Download Australia, which would have debuted in 2020, Download Madrid and Download France in Paris (both of which last took place in 2019).
The UK event, promoted by Festival Republic, this year took place over the 18–20 June weekend as part of the second phase of the UK government’s scientific Events Research Programme (ERP).
Download Pilot welcomed 10,000 metal fans to the hallowed grounds of rock in Donington Park, Leicestershire, to enjoy a fully-fledged festival experience with no social distancing, no masks and moshing allowed. The event was the UK’s first major camping festival of its kind since lockdown.
The flagship event is set to return to the UK between 10-12 June 2022 with a line-up that includes Deftones, Korn and Megadeath.
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Download Madrid on hiatus
The organisers of Download Festival Madrid have announced that the event will not be returning for 2020, while the team works on remodelling the event.
The festival, an expansion of Live Nation’s Download brand, has taken place at the Caja Mágica, Madrid, for the past three years. The inaugural edition of the event “exceeded expectations” in 2017, attracting over 100,000 fans.
The 2019 edition of Download Madrid took place from 28 to 29 June, with performances from Slipknot, Scorpions, Tool and Sabaton.
The Download Madrid organisers shared the news via the following statement:
“We would have liked this statement to be the announcement of the fourth edition of Download Festival Madrid.
“However, as we haven’t achieved all the conditions that we believe a festival of this nature requires, we have chosen to take some time out in which we wish to look for a way to replace it and find a new direction. For this reason, we are confirming that Download Festival Madrid will not be held in 2020.
“The team that has made each of these three editions possible is already working on the new future of Download Festival Madrid”
“During this time, we will evaluate different options, with the aim of offering the best experience possible, which is what the 250,000 metal and rock fans that have already passed through three previous editions of Download Madrid deserve.
“Over the past three years, Download Festival Madrid has positioned itself on the main festival circuit in our country, with memorable performances from [artists] such as Guns n’ Roses, Ozzy Osbourne, Avenged Sevenfold, Marilyn Manson, the return of Tool to the capital after 13 years, the return of Slipknot, System Of A Down, Scorpions, Judas Priest and, possibly the performance we will remember with the most affection, that of Linkin Park, one of the band’s last shows with Chester Bennington as frontman.
“The team that has made each of these three editions possible is already working on the new future of Download Festival Madrid.”
The flagship Download Festival has taken place at Donington Park, UK, since 2003. Download has since spawned sister events in Australia, Japan and France. The Paris edition of Download, which launchd in 2016, went on a hiatus in 2019. The planned 2020 return of the festival was cancelled last month, due to work on nearby railway infrastructure.
Tickets for the 2020 edition of Download’s flagship UK event, which will take place from 12 to 14 June with headliners Kiss, Iron Maiden and System Of A Down, are available here.
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Copping confirms Download Australia in 2018
Download booker Andy Copping has confirmed to IQ rumours that the long-running metal festival is heading down under.
After rumours of a 2017 event were quashed by Copping last July, a website, downloadfestival.com.au (now offline), briefly went live on Friday, bearing the message “We’re coming for you, Melborne” [sic].
Copping confirmed today the event is indeed on, despite the disappearance of the website, which was originally registered by Live Nation Australia Pty Ltd last year and updated on 12 October.
Download Australia is billed as being promoted by Live Nation, Unified and Secret Sounds, with which the company has a strategic partnership and is the majority owner, respectively.
Similar to Lollapalooza and, more recently, City Limits, Live Nation has over the past two years launched local editions of the UK-born festival franchise in other markets, including France and Spain.
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100,000+ for first Download Madrid
More than 100,000 people attended last weekend’s inaugural Download Madrid, exceeding the expectations of Live Nation Spain and cementing the event as one of Spain’s “rock and metal festivals of reference”, says the promoter.
Download Madrid was announced last October alongside the French edition of Lollapalooza, and joins a string of new festivals launched in the Spanish capital over the past two years, including Live Nation’s Mad Cool and Glaciar Music’s Utopía.
Taking place at the Caja Mágica (‘Magic Box’) stadium from Thursday 22 to Saturday 24 June, festival performers included Linkin Park, System of a Down, Prophets of Rage, Mastodon, Five Finger Death Punch and 58 other acts playing across four stages on more than 35,000m² of artificial turf.
Following the successful debut, “the Caja Mágica,” reads a release from Live Nation Spain, “has become the meeting place for an audience that cried out for a rock/metal event of this magnitude in the capital.”
The festival will return in 2018.
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Festival Focus: Snowbombing, FIB, Download
Broadwick Live’s music ‘n’ ski event Snowbombing today announced an avalanche (geddit?) of new acts for the 2017 festival.
Blossoms, Slaves, De La Soul, Grandmaster Flash, Giggs, Dixon, Shy FX and more will join previously announced headliners Chase & Status for six days of “luxurious spas, igloo raves, rooftop hot tubs, forest parties [and] snow-yoga” at the Mayrhofen ski resort in Austria from 3 to 8 April.
As if that wasn’t enough, there’ll also be “special guest appearances” from everyone’s favourite spandex-clad ’90s early-morning TV fitness instructor, Derrick Evans (aka Mr Motivator), and loveably inept British ski jumper Eddie ‘The Eagle’ Edwards, whose life story was the subject of a recent film starring Taron Egerton and Hugh Jackman.
Fingers crossed for a Grandmaster Flash/Mr Motivator duet.
In today’s other major festival news, Red Hot Chili Peppers will be headlining Festival Internacional de Benicassim (FIB) next July.
The American four-piece, who wheadlined Reading and Leeds, Lollapalooza Chicago, T in the Park, Fuji Rock and more this year, are also confirmed for Super Rock Super Bock in Lisbon the same weekend (13–16 July) and Rock in Rio in September 2017.
FIB, which takes place in the Spanish coastal town of Benicàssim, is promoted by Maraworld, part-owned by Denis Desmond’s MCD Concerts. (Anthony Kiedis/Red Hot Chili Peppers photo by M. Krobath/ANSPress Society News.)
The second edition of Live Nation France’s Download Paris has announced its three headliners for 2017.
System of a Down – revealed last month as the first act confirmed for the new Download Spain, the second international spin-off from the long-running UK metal festival – will join Linkin Park and Blink-182 at a disused airbase in Le Plessis-Pâté, in Île-de-France, from 9 to 11 June. (System of a Down photo by Macarena Viza.)
Also playing will be Rage Against the Machine/Public Enemy/Cypress Hill supergroup Prophets of Rage.
The first line-up announcement for the UK Download is expected this week.
Update (4/11/16): It’s System of a Down, Biffy Clyro and Aerosmith.
Other notable developments since the last instalment of Festival Focus:
- After increasing its capacity for 2016, the 21st Amsterdam Dance Event was a record-breaker, with 550 speakers, more than 2,200 artists in 140 venues+, 1,000+ events and a best-ever 375,000 visitors from 19 to 23 October
- Primavera Sound’s indoor Primavera Club festival took place across three Barcelona venues from 21 to 23 October. With 37 participating artists from the US, UK, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, Denmark and more, the event was, says Primavera Sound, “the perfect opportunity to discover first-hand a great variety of innovative artists, most of whom [were] playing in the Catalan capital for the first time”
- Roskilde Festival has announced its first 14 acts for 2017: Moderat/Modeselektor, Trentemøller, Afenginn, Angel Olsen, G-Eazy, Gangly, Hieroglyphic Being, Jenny Hval, Marching Church, Mats Gustafsson/Hidros Zap, Of Mice & Men, Pig Destroyer, 67 and Romperayo. “With more than 160 acts yet to be announced, next year’s festival is sure to offer both headliners and bands that are ready to break through to a wider audience,” says Anders Wahrén, the Danish festival’s head of programme
- SSC’s New Fall Festival returned for a sixth time on 27–30 October in Dusseldorf and Stuttgart. More than 20,000 attended to see an eclectic line-up including Adam Green, Explosions in the Sky, John Grant, Wilco and Kate Tempest
- Linkin Park will open Sziget’s Volt Festival in Sopron, Hungary, on 27 June (Linkin Park photo by Kristina Servant)
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Lolla Paris, Download Madrid confirmed for 2017
Two major Live Nation festival brands look set to be increasing their presence in continental Europe in 2017.
In an interview yesterday with French magazine Télérama, Live Nation France’s managing director, Angelo Gopee, revealed Paris will host its own edition of Lollapalooza next July. Taking place on 22 and 23 July at the Longchamp racecourse – the home of the French edition of fellow Live Nation event Download – Lollapalooza Paris will become the fifth international version of the long-running Chicago festival, founded in 1991 by Jane’s Addiction’s Perry Farrell, after Santiago, Chile; Sao Paolo; Buenos Aires; and, most recently, Berlin.
Gopee says the promoter wants to take advantage of the lack of any competing events in the French capital on that weekend, “when many tourists are present in Paris and France”. He declined to name any potential acts, but promised Live Nation would focus on booking “the best possible artists”.
Live Nation is seeking to take advantage of the lack of any competing events in Paris on that weekend
On the same day, reports surfaced in the Spanish press that metal festival Download – held since 2003 in Donington Park, UK, and since 2016 in Paris – would take place in Madrid for the first time next June. The news initially leaked via a Bandsintown listing showing System of a Down playing at Download Festival in Madrid, Spain, before an official website launched later in the day.
No venue has yet been revealed, although IQ has contacted Live Nation Spain for comment.
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