Musicians choose Rock Werchter as favourite festival

Rock Werchter, the Belgium’s biggest music festival, which takes place every summer near Leuven, has won Artists’ Favourite Festival in Europe at the European Festival Awards (EFA) in Groningen, the Netherlands. Werchter was up against Flanders’ own Pukkelpop, Lowlands in the Netherlands and Sziget in Hungary as Artists’ Favourite.

Werchter was nominated in three EFA categories, including as overall best festival, which was won by the Untold Festival in Romania. It also featured on the shortlist for Best Line-Up, along with Graspop in Flanders, Glastonbury in the UK and Sziget.

Rock Werchter was started as a one-day event in 1974 and has since become one of the largest and most celebrated summer music festivals in the world, hosting 88,000 visitors a day for four days. The festival was originally the idea of Flemish entrepreneur Herman Schueremans, who sold it to Live Nation in 2003 shortly before being elected to the Flemish parliament for Open VLD.

Rock Werchter has been voted best festival in the world by the International Live Music Conference, the most prominent gathering of concert industry professionals, six times, the last one in 2014.

Photo courtesy Rock Werchter