Festival summer 2025 could be a flop

Looking at the festival announcements of the last few days, you might suddenly think that Finnish summer festivals are doing well.

Next summer’s Rockfest, which focuses on heavy rock, will see the likes of English heavy metal icon Judas Priest, experimental rockers Muse, hardcore punk legends Black Flag and thrash juggernaut Sepultura, playing their last gig in Finland. After a gap year, the festival will move from Hyvinkää to Turku and will take place at Artukainen Field and the adjacent Gatorade Center on 12-14 June.

The Helsinki City Festival, which broke the news last summer with its toilet chaos, will bring more than 50 foreign and domestic artists to the Helsinki Ice Hall area on the same weekend. Headliners include Queen’s current soloist Adam Lambert, Grammy award-winning Jamaican rapper Sean Paul, the late 1990s R&B trio Sugababes and returning Finnish rap pioneers Fintelligens.

Sideways, which lost its place at City Festival, will take a gap year next summer. However, Fullsteam Agency, the organiser of Sideways, will bring a new festival combining music and food, À la Park, to Helsinki Meripuisto on 1-2 August. The festival will feature Swedish singer-songwriter José González, Finnish pop hitmaker Behm and the Anna Puu, Erin and Ida Paul supergroup Rodeo.

Joensuu will also be the venue for the traditional Ilosaarirock from 18 to 20 July. Among the first acts to be announced at the event will be Shaboozey, the current star of country music, Australian cult rock band Battlesnake, US singer-songwriter and social media star Alex Warren and returning Finnish hardcore punk band Endstand.

But the artist launches at the major and mid-sized festivals do not tell the whole story of the upcoming event. The year 2025 is becoming more challenging than before, especially for the more marginal summer festivals and provincial event organisers.

This is due to the government’s cultural cuts, and in particular the halving of the private copying levy from €11 million to €5.5 million.

The private copying levy is used to finance regional cultural events and festivals, among other things, through the cultural promotion centres. The subsidies help to bring performers to events that would otherwise not be seen in the region and keep prices accessible to the public. To date, over 10 000 music events in more than 200 municipalities across Finland have been supported by the rebate.

Now many of these events are at risk. These include the Oulu region chamber music festival Oulunsalo Soi and the jazz and rhythm music festival Elojazz. A week ago, their directors and a number of other Oulu festival bosses published an appeal for the future of their events in the newspaper Kaleva.

If the government does not cancel its plans to halve the compensation fee, more cries of distress are likely to be heard. As a result, many traditional cultural events could disappear, especially in smaller towns and cities.