Festivalgoers who arrived at Electric Picnic on Friday have said that the music festival’s main campsites were full much earlier than usual and that the only spaces they could find were in overflow sites some distance away.
The annual event at the Stradbally estate in Co Laois, which is Ireland’s biggest outdoor summer music festival, expanded its capacity from 50,000 people in 2019 to 70,000 in 2023 and to 75,000 this year.
Zoja Skocenova, from Kilkenny, said she and two friends, Niamh Hogan and Ria McCormack, had an “absolutely awful” experience trying to find a place to pitch their tent, despite arriving at 10am. They spent more than three hours looking for a spot. “We had to walk from the car park. There is no room for camping, except for the overflow.”
Kate Mockler, from Greystones in Co Wicklow, said she and her friend Michaela McGrath spent two hours walking from the drop-off point to the overflow campsite. “It hasn’t been a good time for us. The gates were shut off for the camping sites. I have arrived down here at 8pm to 9pm at night and never had this experience before. We are in the furthest campsite, as there was nothing left for us.”
The Electric Picnic Banter forum on Facebook featured multiple reports that organisers asked festivalgoers who had pitched gazebos in addition to tents to take them down, in order to make more room for other festivalgoers. Some of the camping facilities have been rearranged since last year, with two campsites, Charlie Chaplin and Oscar Wilde, no longer featuring.
A spokesperson for the festival said it is standard practice each year for festivalgoers to be directed to overflow campsites when the designated ones are full.
Fans are nevertheless showing themselves keen to enjoy every minute of the weekend. “It’s gotten massive, but it is still great craic,” said Leah Leslie, from Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin, who said she has been to every Electric Picnic since 2009. The first festival was in 2004.
Andrew Emerson, who is 48 and from Portarlington, says he has lost count of the number of Electric Picnics he has been to. “It’s the buzz off the young people. Everyone is in good form and there’s loads of energy,” he said. “I’m stuck in the generation of the 1990s and the 2000s. I’m here to wander around and be dragged into a tent by what I hear from skins, bass guitar and electric guitar.”
Connie Tobin, from Bray, Co Wicklow, said: “This is Electric Picnic number six or seven for me. This is the best festival I have ever been at. It is good vibes all around. You could come a million times and never see all of it. You see something new every single time.”
The festival began on Thursday night with a world record set by early arrivals, when 3,797 people performed a rock-the-boat dance routine. The previous record had been set in Derry in May. The money raised will go to the Laois branch of Save Our Sons & Daughters Ireland, a suicide-prevention charity.
Arriving fans have been greeted by sunshine and breezes; the ground was dry on Friday, and no rain is forecast for the weekend. This year’s festival is earlier than usual, moved from the first weekend in September to facilitate a one-off act, according to Melvin Benn of Festival Republic, which runs the event. The act is said to be Kylie Minogue, who headlines the festival’s final night, on Sunday.
Electric Picnic’s traditional dates will still be a significant weekend for music, with Coldplay set to perform four sold-out concerts at Croke Park in Dublin on August 29th and 30th and September 1st and 2nd.
Electric Picnic’s main arena features an HSE tent with surrender bins for illegal drugs, as well as an on-site laboratory. It was visited this week by Colm Burke, Minister of State for Public Health, Well Being and National Drugs Strategy.
[ Electric Picnic: Here’s where to find the best food at the festivalOpens in new window ]
“Our involvement here is to ensure that people can be safe,” he said. “Last year more than 90 different samples were surrendered. There were four items identified as being very dangerous. We want people to come home safely out of the event. Each year we have had greater numbers coming up and providing samples of what they purchased.”
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