Three days in Boom just aren’t enough. After a sell-out event in 2013 with some epic performances, ID&T’s Tomorrowland will follow in the footsteps of Ultra Music Festival and Coachella for its tenth year by adding a second consecutive weekend. The Boom, Belgium festival boasted over 180,000 attendees this past summer, and claims to have turned down nearly two million interested ticket buyers. Organizers say adding the additional weekend will allow more fans a chance to attend.
Despite being somewhat remote in a small town between Antwerp and Brussels, the second weekend is not designed to make Boom a rave vacation destination for the week in-between. Promising a larger festival and line-ups that are “more or less the same,” festival founders Manu and Michiel Beers say they want to meet the demands of as many customers as possible.
Due in part to its location in northern Europe, Tomorrowland has become known as the most “international” of dance music festivals, where revelers wave flags of their home countries high above the crowds. Its American spin-off, TomorrowWorld, replicated that globalism to some extent this past September.
While the second weekend is being promoted as a one-time event in honor of its tenth anniversary, a look at the success of other double-weekend festivals (and the ravenous EDM appetite of ID&T’s new parent company, SFX) indicates that this will likely be a recurring feature.
Tomorrowland 2014 is scheduled for July 18 – 20 and July 25 – 27.