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Since its founding in 2016, the Copenhagen festival A COLOSSAL WEEKEND has been an artistic platform for boundary-crossing, heavy and experimental music. It is a festival where representation, inclusion and aesthetic radicalism go hand in hand, just as it is a free space where audiences and artists can meet in safety, openness and musical exploration.

Next year, the festival will celebrate its 10th anniversary, taking place May 7-9, 2026 with VEGA and Basement in Vesterbro in Copenhagen as the permanent location.

The festival places diversity as a foundation for artistic quality and presents a strong presence of female, non-binary and queer artists. Music and exploration are intertwined with existential and sometimes political themes – from furious punk to ritualistic ambient and poetic doom.

The names you can expect to see on Friday are:

Cult of Luna (SEE)
Cult of Luna have shaped – and often defined – the global post-metal scene for more than two decades. The band emerged in 1998 from the hardcore project Eclipse and immediately set an uncompromising standard with their self-titled debut from 2001. From there grew a catalogue borne of ambition, intensity and an almost physical emotional weight. With albums such as Salvation, Vertical and latest The Long Road North Cult of Luna has cemented itself as one of the post-metal scene's most visionary forces – as architects of a sound universe where earthquake-like power meets chilling cinematic beauty.

THOT (BE)
THOT is a Belgian art-rock collective, known for their dynamic and genre-defying sound, fusing post-rock, industrial tension and art-rock experimentalism into something both corporeal and poetic. Founded by visionary Grégoire Fray, THOT grew from a lone spark into a full band that functions as one unified artistic organism. Their latest album Delta is a raw and reflective work. A fundamentally organic and uncompromising meditation on where art and love can breathe in a shattered world.

Pain Magazine (FR)
Pain Magazine emerges from the French underground, blending noise rock, hardcore and avant-garde into an unpredictable and explosive sound. The name – an ironic commentary on consumer culture – reflects the music’s foundation of distortion and chaos. The album Violent God (2024) was recorded in just sixteen days and captures a raw energy filled with intensity, exhaustion and redemption.

Hyper Crazy (JP)
From Tokyo, Hyper Gal emerges as a whirlwind of punk, math rock and unfiltered DIY energy. The music is fast, edgy and quivering with nervous intensity – a meeting point between Japan's underground hardcore and experimental rock. On release Pure (2023) fuses experimental rock, distorted electronics and broken rhythms into a universe that is at once playful, frightening and hypnotic.

Shearling (US)
Shearling draws inspiration from the American underground, creating a sound that fuses the melancholy of slowcore, the hazy soundscapes of shoegaze, and the weight of post-rock. It's music that's both rich and fragile – guitars and vocals lie like a dreamy veil, tender and crushing at the same time. On the album Motherfucker, I Am Both: “Amen” and “Hallelujah” (2022) they expand the palette with banjo, dulcimer and electronics and open up a surreal universe that both challenges and enchants.

Truckfighters (SE)
Truckfighters channel the sound of the desert from the heart of Örebro, where stoner rock meets Scandinavian attitude. Their music channels desert rock through dense layers of fuzz and hypnotic grooves. The sound is deeply rooted in stoner rock with fuzz pedals turned up all the way and a playful confidence reminiscent of Kyuss, but with a distinctly Scandinavian touch. The album V (Fuzzorama Records, 2021) captures their love of open riffs, hypnotic grooves, and psychedelic melodies that spread like sunlit highways.

Blackwater Holylight (US)
Since their humble beginnings in Portland, Oregon in 2016, Blackwater Holylight have shaped their very own vision of heavy psychedelic rock, where the heaviness of doom is intertwined with the hazy melancholy of shoegaze and the hypnotic pulse of stoner rock. With the album Silence/Exercise reached a new creative peak – an emotional work born of personal upheaval, where shimmering vulnerability balances against riffs that crash like slow waves against the shore. On their latest EP, If You Only Knew, they further tighten their grip on the tension between strength and fragility – sorrow wrapped in reverberation.

A COLOSSAL WEEKEND is a non-profit, independent festival organized by VEGA in collaboration with a number of local actors.

The concert is supported by Liveurope. Liveurope is the first pan-European initiative supporting concert venues in their efforts to promote emerging European artists. Liveurope is co-funded by the EU's Creative Europe programme.