Pukkelpop has started, but is not (yet) fully booked: “It has been a difficult year” | THE FESTIVAL SUMMER

Day one was sweltering hot. With Flemish women like Coely, Sylvie Kreusch and surprise act Kate Ryan on the stages and thirty degrees on the grass under your feet. There was plenty of room to move on the pasture in Hasselt. To all corners. “Slightly fewer tickets were sold this year,” confirms Pukkelpop spokesman Frederik Luyten. “A comparable situation with 2018, when we were not sold out either.” At the last edition in August 2019, all tickets were sold out before the start. “Although that only happened just before the festival. This year it is expected to be the same with our Saturday, we are close to a sale there.”

Pukkelpop is looking for an explanation for the war in Ukraine and the oversupply of extra events this summer. “It has been a difficult year,” says Luyten. “When the problems started in Ukraine, everyone felt it in their wallets. Everything has become a lot more expensive and events feel that.” Rock Werchter Encore and the festival day for Alex Agnew in Werchter, among others, were canceled due to disappointing sales. Only the extra weekend of Tomorrowland was sold out within hours.

Where hits like Rock Werchter and Tomorrowland were almost completely sold out two years ago, Pukkelpop — which is the last to take place in the summer — had barely sold any tickets. “A small number of people had already bought a ticket for Pukkelpop 2020 through presales around Christmas 2019, but the majority of our tickets for that edition had not even gone on sale,” explains Frederik Luyten. “The people who have now bought a ticket, therefore, have not had it for very long.”

Slipknot, Cypress Hill, Sean Paul and Belgians such as Oscar and the Wolf, Charlotte De Witte and Milo Meskens will grace the line-up in the coming days. “In addition to the musical offer, we have also provided a lot of challenging fringe animation this year,” says Luyten. “The weather is also good: outside the predicted drop of Friday, the ideal festival weather. In any case, we are ready for a lot of people.”

Tickets en info via pukkelpop.be

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