Belgium’s Tomorrowland festival has sold 600,000 passes for its 2022 festival.
The event has been cancelled for the past two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with the sell-out demonstrating Europe’s pent-up demand for live music festivals.
Belgium’s flagship festival will return in-person for the first time since 2019 with three weekends in July in the cities of Boom and Rumst.
Organisers of Tomorrowland secured the three weekends in the province of Antwerp for the first and only time, so that the festival could attempt to recoup some of the losses accrued from the pandemic.
Tomorrowland spokesperson Debby Wilmsen told Billboard: “We are very happy to welcome 600,000 festivalgoers at Tomorrowland in Belgium this summer. It is great to see that people [stayed] positive in those challenging years and we are looking forward to share love, music and friendship soon.”
The 2020 and 2021 editions of Tomorrowland were cancelled, resulting in a loss of around €25m (£21m/$28m). Traditionally, the festival welcomes 75,000 attendees each day to watch some of the world’s top dance artists and musicians.
Last year’s event was cancelled just two months before the festival was set to take place, as organisers were denied a permit. Tomorrowland instead hosted two virtual events called Tomorrowland: Around the Word, with the first event selling almost 140,000 tickets. The pay-per-view festival featured artists such as David Guetta, Tiësto, Eriz Prydz and Martin Garrix.
This year’s Tomorrowland weekends will take place from July 15-17, July 22-24 and July 29-31. More than 700 different artists will perform across 14 stages including Alan Walker, Alesso, Armin van Buuren, Los Frequencies, Major Lazer and Marshmello.
Image: Daniels Joffe on Unsplash