This summer, Roskilde Festival is expanding its alignment to include a more diverse range of global sounds. The legendary Danish music festival, known for healing Lyps that covers continents and genres, is welcoming a wave of artists from Egypt, Palestine, Syria and Lebanon to its 2025 edition.
From June 28 to July 5 in Roskilde City, the Eight -Day Sonic Marathon will also house main names such as Stormzy, Doechii, Tyla and Charli XCX.
Among the most prominent acts of the Middle East is the Egyptian experimentalist Nada el-Shazly, who appears on the Gloria Gloria Gloria stage of the Festival in July. Known for its avant-garde arrangements, El-Shazly will join a full band, bringing its exclusive merger of traditional Arab sounds, free and electronic jazz driven by the synthesizer to the Danish crowd.
She will share the alignment with a list of regional talents with a vision of the future, including the Palestinian acts Saint Levant, Shabjdeed and the N way; The electro-shaabi duo of Lebanon Bedouin Burger, and Sirian Rockers Totard, whose sound of Golan Heights is immersed in psychedelic territories, funk and reggae.
With the artists who unite continents and redefining what regional music means, this year Roskilde marks a significant change towards a stronger representation from the Middle East, a region too often in the line drivers of the global festival.
Arab music has constantly won the international traction, highlighted by the debut in the head of the Egyptian star Mohamed Ramadan at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival of this year. The impulse follows a historical moment in 2023, when the Palestinian singer Elyanna became the first artist to get on the stage of Coachella with Arab music.
