In 2025, festivals have become defiantly political. Roskilde is one of the most powerful

Music festivals have never just been escapes. For a few days, they’re microcosms where alternative communities form, and a version of life that’s messier, freer, and more generous comes into focus. One where strangers leave their belongings in unlocked tents, and booze is shared property. Private cultures emerge. People dress beyond the limits of gender or professionalism. The phone signal’s too shit to doomscroll. And it’s here, in the cracks between routine, radical new visions of society start to feel possible.

At Roskilde – the Scandinavian answer to Glastonbury – this principle is baked in. The 130,000-strong festival on the outskirts of Copenhagen becomes Denmark’s third largest city for a week, and it wears this title with intent. ​“We have always wanted to be a place in which people begin to create a better world,” says Thomas Jepsen, one of the festival’s long-time programmers. ​“There are good festivals around the world, but the bigger ones aren’t necessarily independent anymore. We fight against that every day – and it’s hard work.”

Now in its fifth decade, Roskilde is entirely non-profit, powered by 30,000 volunteers. The programming team is multigenerational – six of the 14 members are under 30. ​“I’m a 40-plus cis man, I don’t go to nightclubs anymore,” Thomas laughs. On entering – first past a metallic forest of everyone’s parked bikes – there are large graffiti murals with messages championing all sorts of causes. The art installations critique climate capitalism. The food stalls champion circular systems. 

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There are some policies that make so much sense that they beg the question: ​“Why doesn’t everyone do this?” Most stages, for example, have large, ramped platforms in the middle of the crowd for wheelchair users, older attendees, or anyone who can’t stand for long periods. The merch tent offers a ​“print your own” service, where festivalgoers are encouraged to bring in old clothes to get the Roskilde logo printed onto, rather than buying new. People arrive in droves to put their old t‑shirts and knickers in the printing machine – the queue consistently longer than the one for standard merch.

For the festival’s organisers, dogooding isn’t cordoned off – it’s made to feel more like a no brainer. ​“We don’t single out themes or say ​‘this is accessibility’ and ​‘this is logistics’. It’s all part of how we work,” explains Mika Christoffersen, the festival’s head of participation and diversity. To explain this, she invokes Maslow’s pyramid of needs: ​“the lowest one is like shelter and food and peeing and all those things – things you never think about at home. They’re just a part of your routine,” she says. ​“But here everyone is thrown all the way to the bottom. Where do I pitch my tents? How do I find a bathroom? Where do I get food? My socks are wet.” The focus, she says, is not just about making sure everyone can ​“physically participate”, but actively ​“thrive” in the middle of a field. 

The result is a spirit where collective joy and political urgency seem to merge. At Saint Levant’s set – a Palestinian-French-Algerian singer and rapper – it was at times hard to distinguish between concert and protest. The audience (Greta Thunberg among them) is a restless charge of waving keffiyehs and Palestinian flags, half chanting half singing to the music on stage. At one point, the band took a series of plastic chairs and shattered them onto the stage: ​“Today, I’m looking at a sea of people – I can’t even see to the back – and I know that all of you here stand with the occupied people of Palestine,” says Marwan Abdelhamid (Saint Levant). ​“You are on the right side of history.”

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The same spirit runs through the surprise moment when Irish band Fontaines D.C. hand over their mics to a Palestinian group to address the crowd directly: ​“There is a genocide going on right now, and festivals like this are one of the only places we can bypass the censorship of the media.” It sparked debate across Denmark – and reports from Danish media suggest that Roskilde’s organisers were made aware of the protest in advance. The festival reportedly allowed the action to go ahead, maintaining that it did not violate its rules: ​“It was a statement, definitely, but it’s got people talking,” says Thomas. ​“We never endorse violence but otherwise the stage is theirs [the artists’] to use as a platform. We’re proud of how they’re using their voices.”

Of course, 2025’s festival season was never going to come quietly. At this year’s Glastonbury – dubbed the most politicised in its history – acts like Bob Vylan and Kneecap led crowds in chants of ​“Free Palestine” (and in Bob Vylan’s case, ​“Death to the IDF”), sparking police investigations and public backlash. But Palestinian solidarity was a talking point that existed throughout the festival – audiences were constantly awash with Palestinian flags, while swathes of other artists also used their sets to speak against the genocide – including Australian rock group Amyl and the Sniffers, Irish pop singer CMAT and English psychedelic R&B songstress Greentea Peng – receiving far less media coverage. Meanwhile, protest installations by the likes of Led By Donkeys, which lampooned Trump, Musk, and Farage, were dotted across the site.

The backlash has reignited the long-spouted idea that political action might come at the expense of enjoyment – the kind of well-behaved beer-drinking enjoyment you might glean from the coverage on BBC One. Or that taking action on buzzwords like climate justice, anti-racism, anti-homophobia, and accessibility might somehow manifest as drab moral righteousness. 

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But music and protest have always gone hand-in-hand. In the ​’80s, the anti-nuclear movement found a natural ally in live music – Glastonbury became a hub for Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) activism, while the US ​“No Nukes” concerts drew hundreds of thousands in support of disarmament. In the 2000s, the Iraq War sparked a new wave of political expression on stage, with artists using festivals and tours to speak out. These moments weren’t just background noise – they shaped cultural consciousness and produced some of the era’s most iconic music. Key songs in the musical canon, like Green Day’s ​‘American Idiot’, Rage Against the Machine’s ​‘Guerrilla Radio’, and countless more are often held up as direct critiques of the US’s involvement in global conflicts.

Festivals like Glastonbury and Roskilde, and artists such as Fontaines D.C., Kneecap, Bob Vylan, Saint Levant and others, are continuing this legacy. As protests on the streets become ever more tightly policed, and even dangerous – this weekend, over 100 people protesting the proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist group were arrested across the UK – dancefloors and concert crowds are increasingly becoming vital sites for solidarity and expression.

Here at Roskilde, an air of freedom and euphoria pulses through the festival – unlike many British festivals, the vast campsites are part of the party, with self-built raves dotted between tents, music blasting from DIY speaker setups into the daylight hours. Wander a bit further and you’ll find a lake where people swim – nude, in swimsuits, some fully clothed. Peeing happens anywhere, including the hot-pink ​“female urinals” designed for squatting. Very little is off-limits.

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Even at the biggest headliner sets, intimacy holds. Midway through his performance, Stormzy stops to credit Roskilde for being the place that kicked off his career a decade ago.“I know it’s a cliché thing for artists to say, but there really is no audience like here in Denmark,” he tells the crowd, before closing his set to a full-blown firework display. 

Thomas, who runs through the campsite each morning, says his favourite thing is hearing young people discuss the political questions raised on stage or in talks the night before. ​“That’s what it’s for,” he says. ​“We want to programme music that embraces the time we’re living in.”

In a year that has felt more dystopian than ever – more online, more fractured, more billionaire-owned – bringing people into a field, mainly to get mashed, listen to music and have a good time, already feels like a statement. But Roskilde wears its message on its sleeve, proving that joy doesn’t have to be at odds with resistance. At festivals, they happen together.

To stay in the loop with Roskilde’s 2026 edition, visit the festival’s official website.

Ella Glossop is Huck’s social lead. Follow her on Bluesky.

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