Koopmans Goes For Second Swedish Fest

Festival promoter Folkert Koopmans is ramping up his Scandinavian operations by starting a new festival in Norrköping.

At the beginning of the year he broke Swedish ground for the first time by reviving the bankrupt Hultsfred Festival. Now, he plans to start a new event at F13, an old military airbase at the city’s Bråvalla district.

The site is capable of holding 50,000 and Koopmans, who runs about a dozen German festivals plus outdoors in Denmark and Switzerland, is hoping to launch at Norrköping in 2012 or 2013 at the latest.

“It is an ideal festival site. The logistics are in place, there are half a million residents within 45 minutes and half of Sweden’s population within a few hours,” said Gunnar Lagerman, the former Hultsfred and Malmo talent booker who is Koopmans’ local partner for Sweden.

It’s not been decided where Norrköping will fit into the festival calendar but Lagerman says it will be a major event on the lines of the twinned Hurricane and Southside festivals Koopmans promotes in Germany every summer.

“It might even come to be the same weekend as Hurricane and Southside, then we could book the same artists for three different festivals,” Lagerman explained.

This year’s Hultsfred Festival, the first that Koopmans and Lagerman have produced, is July 14-16.