On 20 and 21 September, the tenth edition of Festival Downtown will take place in the centre of Rotterdam. The festival’s progressive, quirky and above all diverse character is deeply rooted in Rotterdam’s DNA. Under the motto: Redefining Rotterdam / Reshaping The Narrative, the festival will celebrate its anniversary.
Festival Downtown pairs the top of various Rotterdam scenes with their national and especially international peers. The emphasis is on audience experience and discovering exciting, current developments within non-mainstream music genres. Over the past nine years, the festival gained a strong reputation as a ‘discovery festival’. It not only followed trends, but also helped define them. Festival Downtown always gave an insight into musical developments and provided a platform for the artists of the future. In recent years, it has featured artists such as Flowdan, Kojey Radical, James BKS, Baloji, Joe Armon-Jones, Dorian Concept, Goldpanda, Special Request, Loraine James and Lapalux, who have since broken through worldwide. But Rotterdam acts such as De Likt, Pink Oculus and Brintex Collective also played one of their first festival shows.
‘The tenth edition! So cool to see that ten years ago, we saw that there were so many new developments going on that we felt it necessary to set up a festival for it. And then now to look back at what we all booked in that time. Rotterdam acts who are now playing all the big festivals, UK acts who played their first foreign show with us and now tour the world. Really cool! And then this year’s lineup… again the sickest so far!’
– said Immanuel Spoor, founder of the festival
Festival Downtown takes place on 20 and 21 September in the centre of Rotterdam
For more information and tickets, visit: festivaldowntown.nl
