The festival summer promises legendary headliners and fresh sounds

The Greenfield Festival in Interlaken in the Bernese Oberland, dedicated to hard rock and metal, kicks off the season with, among others, the US punk rockers The Offspring. This marks their sixth appearance there. Among the headliners in the Bernese Oberland is the Danish metal band Volbeat, which has been performing for 25 years.

The open-air festival Festi’Neuch in Neuchâtel, which also begins on Thursday, is sold out again this year. The Northern Irish band Kneecap will be playing a Swiss concert there for the first time. The rap trio, known for its pro-Irish Republican stance, is famous for its criticism of Israeli military actions and its solidarity with Palestine. In May, the band released its new album, “Fenian.” In addition, the film “Kneecap,” which tells the partly fictional story of the band’s founding, was released in 2024.

Festi’Neuch otherwise features a predominantly French-speaking lineup, including Feu! Chatterton and Jean-Louis Aubert of the former French rock band Téléphone. Vanessa Paradis will also perform in Neuchâtel.

Paléo, Gurten, St. Gallen, Frauenfeld

The French singer and actress will also perform at Switzerland’s largest festival, Paléo. This year’s event sold out quickly once again—in part due to headliners like The Cure and Gorillaz.

New Zealand pop singer and songwriter Lorde will perform not only at Paléo but also on Bern’s local mountain. Faber, Sophie Hunger, and Dino Brandão are also teaming up at the Gurten Festival. They’ll be bringing their 2020 collaborative love manifesto and dialect album “Ich liebe Dich.”

Bern and St. Gallen will share acts such as German musician Nina Chuba and German rapper Souly. It will be a home game in St. Gallen for Monet192, who grew up there, raps in High German, and has also achieved his greatest success in the neighboring country.

There’s plenty of rap in Frauenfeld. Hip-hop from Germany includes Sido & Friends, SSIO, Haftbefehl, and Ufo361. But much of the music comes from the U.S., with headliners like Wiz Khalifa, Gunna, and Yeat.

Difficult Booking

This year, too, the lineups of major festivals show just how difficult it is these days to book current megastars. Presumably because the organizers’ budget would be spent on just a few top acts.

While big names continue to grace the posters of open-air events, these names were already big at least 10 years ago, if not longer. Whether it’s Kraftklub and Sean Paul at Gurten, Lenny Kravitz or Macklemore at the Lakelive Festival in Biel, or Katy Perry at Paléo.

On the other hand, if you’re looking for popular Swiss acts, you’re very likely to find them at the venue where you managed to snag a ticket. Dialect-infused indie-pop musician EDB, for example, seems to be playing every festival, from Sound of Glarus to the Seaside Festival in Spiez, from St. Gallen to Bern to Schaffhausen (Stars in Town). The same goes for rappers Juel X and Nativ. And finally, Lo & Leduc are also on a festival tour.