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 Thursday are:

Feral Nature (NO)
Feral Nature from Oslo strike with an uncompromising intensity and an energy that cannot be ignored. With roots in hardcore, their music is both raw and precise – a fusion of the raw power of punk and the rigid discipline of metal. The result is a sound that balances rage and control, transforming aggression into poetry rather than pure destruction.

King Buffalo (US)
From Rochester, New York, comes King Buffalo – a heavily psychedelic rock trio that has been carving their own path through the international psych underground since 2013. Their sound combines the earthy heaviness of stoner rock with a progressive openness and atmospheric layers so rich you can almost step inside them. Rich guitar layers, hypnotic bass grooves and expressive percussion move in large arcs – from sprawling, desert-like dreamscapes to monumental, riff-driven outbursts.

Svalbard (UK)
Svalbard has become one of the most significant voices in modern heavy music. A band where rage and vulnerability, beauty and brutality coexist without contradiction. Formed in 2011, they weave post-hardcore, blackgaze and atmospheric post-metal together into a sound that is both acutely political and deeply personal. On albums such as One Day All This Will End (2015), It's Hard to Have Hope (2018) and their latest release The Weight of the Mask (2023), they explore identity, grief, misogyny and survival.

HEATH (DK)
HEATHE originates from Aalborg's experimental underground with a sound that transforms despair into something grand, communal and uplifting, reshaping the idea of what heavy music can be. What began as a solitary vision has evolved into a large, rotating ensemble — often with more than ten musicians united in one cleansing wave of drone, post-metal and noise. Their latest double album Control Your Soul's Desire for Freedom is an album with an overwhelming emotional range, praised for its physical power and for the way in which they transform despair into shared redemption.

Skin hunger (DK)
Hudsult is a queer post-hardcore collective that channels vulnerability and rage with a rare, unguarded honesty. The name Hudsult sets the emotional tone for a band drawn to the rawest aspects of human longing.
They emerged in 2023, creating space for voices that refuse to be softened or purified, and they unite the intensity of screamo with poetic introspection and a distinctly Scandinavian emotional strength.

SLIFT (FR)
On stage, SLIFT is like no other. Their performances feel elemental: the guitars erupt in clear, spiraling waves; the bass hits with seismic weight; the drums propel it all forward with a momentum that seems to reshape the space. SLIFT is repeatedly hailed as something rare – an experience that bends time and space, where intensity becomes immersion, and immersion becomes transcendence. It is a unique encounter: overwhelming, brilliant, unforgettable – and something you should never miss.

OMO (UK)
Formed in Glasgow in 2020, OMO is a doom cabaret collective with members from Mogwai, The Twilight Sad, Desalvo, Aereogramme and Stretchheads – a fusion of long-standing friendships, shared scenes and an instinctive pull towards the unruly edges of heavy music. Musically, OMO moves on a shifting terrain where savagery and nuance collide. Thick, doom-saturated riffs are strained against unstable outbursts and cathartic explosions, while electronics flicker at the edges and guitars break like threatening weather clouds.

Slow Crush (BE)
Rooted in Leuven, Belgium, Slow Crush move in the space between haze and weight, a dream-tilted sound built on blurred guitars, warm low-end currents, and Isa Holliday’s featherlight vocal presence. Their new album Thirst (2025, Pure Noise Records) deepens this identity, pulling their shimmering ambience into darker, denser shapes. Glitch textures, rough percussive details, and an unexpected rise of saxophone ripple through the record, widening the world the band have been shaping since Aurora and Hush without disturbing its fragile centre.

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.