Glastonbury Festival, Open’er, Electric Castle, No Sleep Festival and WME’s Lucy Dickins were among those to pick up prizes at the 2019 European Festival Awards, held this evening at Eurosonic Noorderslag (ESNS) in Groningen, the Netherlands.
Hosted by IQ’s Gordon Masson and A Greener Festival’s Claire O’Neill, the award ceremony saw festivals recognised across 15 categories, including best major, medium and small festivals and line-up of the year, as well as awards for green efforts, health and safety innovation and brand activations.
Open’er Festival, organised by independent Polish promoter Alter Art, was the evening’s biggest winner, taking home the prizes for best major festival and best brand activation for its collaboration with Netflix’s Stranger Things.
Representatives from Romania enjoyed a successful evening, with Romanian festivals Electric Castle and Jazz in the Park taking the best medium-sized festival and best small festival gongs respectively, and Codruta Vulcu, the founder of 2018’s best small festival, ARTmania, winning the award for excellence and passion.
German events also put in a good showing, with Hamburg’s Reeperbahn Festival winning best indoor event and Das Fest, which takes place in the German city of Karlsruhe, receiving the Take a Stand award for its commitment to social activism.
Other major prizes went to the UK’s Glastonbury Festival, last year headlined by Stormzy, the Killers and the Cure, for line-up of the year, No Sleep Festival in Serbia for best new festival and to WME’s Lucy Dickins for agent of the year.
As previously announced, Holger Hübner and Thomas Jensen, the co-founders of Wacken Open Air – the winner of best major festival at the 2018 awards – received the lifetime achievement gong at this year’s ceremony.
A full list of European Festival Awards 2019 winners can be found below:
Best major festival
Open’er Festival (Poland)
Best medium-sized festival
Electric Castle (Romania)
Best small festival
Jazz in the Park (Romania)
Best indoor festival
Reeperbahn Festival (Germany)
Best new festival
No Sleep Festival (Serbia)
Line-up of the year
Glastonbury (United Kingdom)
Newcomer of the year
Billie Eilish (US)
The lifetime achievement award
Holger Hübner and Thomas Jensen (Wacken Open Air)
The green operations award
OpenAir St Gallen (Switzerland)
The health and safety innovation award
Balaton Sound (Hungary)
The brand activation award
Open’er Festival (Poland) & Netflix’s Stranger Things
The Take a Stand award
Das Fest (Germany)
The award for excellence and passion
Codruta Vulcu
Promoter of the year
Wepromote (Switzerland)
Agent of the year
Lucy Dickins (WME)
