What is the longest-running music festival in history?
When we think of music festivals, we tend to place them into two distinct categories. First, there are the historic events—like Woodstock—that defined an era and live on through rose-tinted nostalgia. Then, there are the modern events, the festivals we flock to each summer. But one festival stands apart, bridging both worlds as the longest-running music festival in history.
Undeniably, festivals look very different now. To survive, they generally have to be backed by brands, filling festival fields with big advertising marquees to fun the expensive process of putting on an event like that, booking acts and keeping up with the marketing rigmarole that festival season now involves.
Looking back at footage of events like Woodstock or Monterey Pop Festival, that’s part of the reason why these events have become so romanticised. They feel like beacons of the ‘good old days’ when music was independent and hearing it live was often free. We think of festivals from this era as community happenings where music fans and artists alike came together to allow these moments to happen, helping each other out to make it work and take care of one another.
They’re remembered through beautiful images like the couple hugging in the Woodstock crowd of people dancing and having a good time before mobile phones made crowds a digital tea. Not just that, inflation has made tickets eye-wateringly expensive, and modern standards of health and safety even mean that each and every detail of a public gathering has to be meticulously planned and run by some kind of organisational body to meet their standards.
The festivals we go to now feel a far cry from those old ones, but music fans have ever since looked back on them with rose-tinted glasses on, yearning to have been born a few decades earlier to be able to take part in a historical moment or be part of a historical crowd.
But for ticket holders to one particular festival, which is still held annually each summer, that can still come true. As one of the only festivals that has endured from those days through to today, it’s now the longest-running music festival out there, and each year, those in the audience are taking part in its long and still-evolving history.
What is the longest-running music festival?
The answer is Pinkpop, a festival held in Landgraaf, in the Netherlands, each year on Pentecost weekend. That means that the date changes year on year as it takes place on the weekend that comes 50 days after Easter. So, each year, it’ll be sometime between May and June, but it has happened every year since the 1970s.
The festival first began in 1970, one year before Glastonbury, which wouldn’t qualify either way as it isn’t held every year. By now, more than 2million people have attended the festival, which has evolved and grown each time around.
In the 55 years it has been running, artists like Fleetwood Mac, Happy Mondays, The Stooges, Bruce Springsteen, Lou Reed, Oasis, Paul McCartney, The Jam, The Rolling Stones, and hundreds more have graced their stage. Enduring through eras of music, from the rock and roll of the 1970s through the various sounds and chapters in music history, they’ve witnessed new legends emerge and rise on their stages.
Still running today, it’s a triumph and a true beacon of the enduring power of live music and people’s hunger for summer fun.
