Denmark’s Northside Festival To Move Site In 2021

Northside Festival 2020 will be the last edition to take place at Adalen in the Danish city of Aarhus, June 4-6.

The festival, which is currently at a capacity of some 40,000 visitors per day, will move to Eskelund in 2021, a greenfield site in Aarhus twice as large as the current one.

According to a statement from promoter Down The Drain Group, which received investment by Superstruct earlier this year, the move “means that a whole range of ideas and experiences which Ådalen could not accommodate can finally become a reality.”

Northside Festival debuted in 2010 as a one-day event with five Danish artists. It obviously grew in size, but maintained its core values of music, innovation and sustainability, striving to be the most green cultural event in Denmark, by its own admission.

Festival CEO Brian Nielsen said: “The festival must be ‘a controlled chaos’, which is also the essence of what our guests expect: NorthSide must surprise, challenge and perhaps even disrupt them a bit. The festival must never be ‘just another music festival’, which is why in 2020, we will focus even more on creating the right atmosphere, new scenes and party events at the Festival.”

Nielsen said that the festival’s local community was “a key part of what characterises NorthSide. For several years, we have supported people on the margins of society, and I hope that in future, we can make them a larger part of the festival.”

One of the festival’s initiatives is called ‘Sidesporet,’ which translates as side-track, and is described as “a space for people who don’t really fit anywhere else.”

In January 2019, NorthSide was named best medium-sized festival at the European Festival Awards.