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.

Full Festival tickets and single-day tickets are now available.

The names you can experience on Saturday are:

Russian Circles (US)
For over twenty years, Chicago trio Russian Circles have set the standard for post-metal, cementing their reputation as one of the genre's most influential bands. The name - borrowed from an ice hockey drill - hints at the discipline and circular movement that permeate their music. On their latest album Gnosis (2023) they once again demonstrate their unique ability to combine massive heaviness with fragile finesse. Their soundscapes move from cinematic calm to all-consuming intensity, where bass, guitar and drums are woven together into instrumental narratives that are both brutal and beautiful.

Pelican (US)
Pelican creates vast, instrumental soundscapes where heaviness and beauty merge. The band formed in 2000 with guitarists Trevor Shelley de Brauw and Laurent Schroeder-Lebec, and brothers Bryan and Larry Herweg on bass and drums. Their sound took shape in the free-spirited, genre-crossing environment around the Fireside Bowl, where heavy riffs and atmospheric passages could coexist without restraint. With Schroeder-Lebec's return in 2022, Pelican found inspiration again in the spirit of their early years, and on the album Flickering Resonance They combine respect for their roots with subtlety, warmth and expansive post-rock landscapes.

A.A. Williams (UK)
AA Williams performs with a kind of brilliant restraint—songs that unfold from near silence into wide, resonant arcs that hold the space. Every shift is deliberate, every build patient, so that the intensity grows from within rather than bursting outward. The effect is quietly overwhelming: a performance that draws the audience closer, builds in weight, and leaves a lingering glow long after the last note has faded.

Town Portal (DK)
Formed in Copenhagen in 2009 and consolidated as a trio shortly after their debut EP, Town Portal has spent more than a decade shaping a distinctive instrumental language characterized by friction, precision and curiosity. Their sound unites angular polymeters with the melodic noise rock and post-hardcore sensibilities of the 90s, unfolding as a constant negotiation between dissonance and clarity, chaos and groove.

Ellereve (AT)
Formed in the Austrian Alps near Innsbruck, Ellereve is the solo project of vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Elisa Giulia Teschner. Drawing inspiration from post-metal, doom and blackened atmospheres, she creates music where emotional clarity meets cinematic heaviness. What sets Ellereve apart is her ability to connect vulnerability with power, allowing each composition to move fluidly between shadow, resonance and light.

Roomer (DE)
Formed in Berlin as an almost inevitable fusion of four musicians whose long-standing friendships and overlapping backgrounds in avant-garde improvisation, ethereal folk, ambient electronics and experimental songwriting finally coalesced into one band, Roomer's music rests on contrast and accumulation; whispering, confessional lines that cut through hazy guitar sounds, synth tones that shimmer like random memories, and basslines that balance between momentum and emotional contour.

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.