WFD

Front of stage to front of stage, about 10 minutes walk, more if it's busy. As mentioned you'll find a lot of people standing around talking, and not everyone heading in the same direction. Easy enough to get a decent spot at the second stage, less so on the main stage where people will take up positions one or two acts ahead, to get a good spot for their favourite. The third stage is at the "top" of the site as you come in, then 5-10 minutes to the second stage, then another 10 or so to the front of main. Makes it hard work to go from main to third (or third to main) on a hot busy day.

Trams go from the centre to the park, but they get very busy coming back after the headliners. It is walkable (and mostly downhill) back into the centre afterwards, maybe 30-40 minutes to the area round the station. There are "Stay Out" shows after the music in the park ends, and some of the venues for those are walkable from the park.

The middle day is ridiculously good value.

It's a big city festival, has some corporate sponsorship but not as much as say Mad Cool. Its a decent vibe but like a lot of big city festivals you'll find a lot of people are there to socialise and catch one or two big acts and they aren't necessarily hammering it from stage to stage. You can get right down the front for all stages with general admission, subject obviously to the usual considerations of getting their early if you're really keen on being in the barrier. There is a VIP option but the viewing area is that an angle to the side of main stage so doesn't massively get in the way if general admission punters. It's a long thin site and you could find yourself doing a lot of walking if you are stage hopping.

Pet Needs

Clues are underway on Twitter

The aforementioned Aurora, plus Underworld and Belle & Sebastian, ruled out by being announced for Summer Sonic in Japan the same weekend.

That's a Brits Week small venue show, she played Brixton Academy on her 2022 tour. I don't think she'll headline, but it's not a fair comparison to make.

Can see Desire getting added here if there's room, Johnny Jewel plays with Desire and the two acts are doubling up elsewhere, including in Manchester the night before Wide Awake.

Obvious fit for the Death Cab / Postal Service day at APE, but that would be directly after two consecutive dates in France, so doesn't seem very likely, whereas they are completely free on GM weekend. They are also free on what would have been Bluedot weekend (I think) so wonder if they were lined up for that before it was cancelled.

Wet Leg and Overmono both played last year, so would cross them off.

Jane's Addiction playing in Luxembourg on the 3rd, with festival announcements to be added soon.

Their social media has just woken up again, so potentially something coming soon.

Presale tomorrow confirmed.

Useful guide overall but can probably drop Alvvays (Live Is Live) and FKA Twigs (billed as a European festival exclusive at Primavera)

The standard tickets don't include camping, you buy a separate camping ticket. The festival "HQ" is at the football stadium at San Mames - this is where the wristband exchange is, where the shuttle buses go from, and also there is a signed walking route which starts from there (and if you set off at certain times you get accompanied by a marching band). You can walk up to the festival site (and it is VERY up) in 25-30 minutes from the stadium, and it is easy to walk back down that way when leaving the festival. So any hotel within walking distance of the stadium is ideal. There are is also a regular bus route which gets you from the city centre to at least near the festival site, but we didn't need to us this so not sure how useful it is coming back afterwards, I expect that bus route will have stopped by the time the later acts are on.

They headlined Solfest - a tiny camping festival round here - earlier this year. I wasn't there but I'd guess there were no more than a couple of thousand people at the whole thing. They were actually the only headliners to turn up, the others being Peter Hook & The Light, and De La Soul (The Lottery Winners stood in as replacement headliners for one of them), so that gives you an idea of the sort of level they themselves accept they are at. They are way off R&L main stage headliners.

Quite thorough I would say, you'd get patted down and any water bottle would be checked. It might even be that (like many UK festivals) you can't take a filled bottle in with you anyway. I never tried to take one in so can't remember exactly, but either way I wouldn't rely on it as a tactic.

Swedish licensing laws, as far as I understand it (but anyone from Sweden would know better than me). You have to be 18 to even get into the area where higher strength alcohol is sold.

There is a similar discussion happening on the 2024 thread. I think I'm right in saying all of the Stay Out venues are over-18s only, and Stay Out is a good add-on but the main festival is value enough on its own, so you're not missing a major part of the value (I've been twice and didn't make any Stay Out shows in 2023). They do have some decent sized names in those slots (e.g. Murder Capital and Jockstrap this year) but much of the Stay Out line up is Swedish and/or up and coming acts. Where they have drinking restrictions they are strictly applied (with barriers and security stewards), but as mentioned on the other discussion, in 2023 you could at least drink beer anywhere on the site, which wasn't the case in 2022 (wine, sprits and stronger beer are still confined to certain areas).

This year you could drink standard strength beer anywhere on the site. Previously this wasn't the case, but even then each stage had an area where you could drink within decent view of the stage. This year wine and spirits (and stronger/craft beer) were kept to the restricted areas, and the extent to which you could see a stage varied by area.

There's no camping, it's very much a city break festival. The drinking rules were eased a bit this year, for beer at least (wine and spirits are still quite tightly controlled). On the plus side you get access to Stay Out West, separate shows in city centre indoor venues from 11pm-3am, included in the main festival price, as well as a daytime film festival. It's a nice setting and there is some effort made to give the smaller stages their own feel (bars and places to sit within view of the stage). Quite corporate though, lots of sponsorship going on. I've enjoyed both times I've been but it might not be to everyone's liking when there are some very different options out there.

Announcement tomorrow 8am.

Took me two goes but got the confirmation screen now (no email yet). The timer at the bottom doesn't seem to mean anything, it looks like you've got loads of time left but then times you out. If you're timed out its probably better to shut everything down then start afresh, I got straight back in the second time.

We just got back last night having done this in a road trip combined with Pukkelpop, and agree with the above. It was a long hike between stages and found I had to change some plans to take it into account (for example went to see julie instead of Snail Mail as I was up at that end before and after julie's set so it made sense to stay up there rather than do two long walks just to see half of Snail Mail's set). Liked the beer selection, and nice to get a half litre option rather than the 300 ml that other European festivals seem to prefer (wasn't tempted into the one litre pitcher option though!). Didn't eat anything inside, although daughter got a couple of things when the queues weren't so bad. Great setting, and easy to get a decent spot for most sets apart from the headliners. Most of the big acts didn't have much in the way of alternatives against them on other stages so there were some huge crowds, and due to the narrow configuration the crowds went a long way back. YYYs and Fever Ray were the major highlights for me, and was happy with the line up overall. Sound was decent, we left The Strokes about an hour into their set as we'd felt we'd done enough for the weekend, and could still hear them all the way up to Bosquet. Bit weird to be seeing them starting to take the other stages apart while the main stage headliner was still playing though!