50 Most Popular Music Festivals in the World

It’s that time of year when the staff at Music Festival Wizard crunch the data from millions of visitors to determine the most popular festivals of 2016. Our methodology is simple — we take the data from 5.7 million festival fans that visited our website and see who rises to the top.

The MFWizard50 is divided up into our three most popular music festival regions: North America, the United Kingdom, and continental Europe. Data is taken from the beginning of July 2015 (when we posted our first 2016 festival) to December 31, 2016.

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Most Popular Festivals in North America 2016

It was good year for rookie fests. A major New York City festival is always going to make a huge splash, and the inaugural Panorama (#11) generated enough buzz to flirt with a top ten spot. The organizers of Coachella (#1) returned with the Desert Trip Festival (#28), aka Oldchella, that brought legendary names to the desert for a fall festival. Florida’s latest entry into the festival market, Okeechobee Festival (#24), finished near the middle, while electronic festival newcomer Sundown (#13) in Southern California, made a surprising burst towards the top of the list.

There’s dozens of genre-specific festivals for country, electronic, metal, and jam, but when it comes to hip-hop, the festival world falls short. Our data from this year show fans hungry for more hip-hop with the Minneapolis based Soundset (#5) landing a top five spot and the Brooklyn Hip-Hop Festival (#34) making an appearance as well.

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Most Popular Festivals in Europe 2016

Our predominately English-speaking audience and the brand name recognition of Lollapalooza (#1) catapulted the Berlin edition of the mega-festival to the top spot for 2016. Right behind it is Portugal’s answer to Burning Man, Boom Festival (#2), a transformational fest which takes place every other year.

Croatia continues to dominate the summer festival scene with a festival happening nearly every weekend during 2016. Top spots this year went to Ultra Europe (#3), Outlook (#4), and Hideout (#10). We’re not sure when the bubble will burst here in the Balkans, but for now, festies remain hyped to party on the Adriatic Sea. The Netherlands and Spain both scored high with each country posting multiple festivals to this year’s MFWizard50.

For a genre that’s so loud, metal fans are typically underrepresented when it comes to festival media. This year’s numbers shows that this scene is a popular as ever with France’s Hellfest (#20), Germany’s Wacken (#24), and the Paris Download (#39) all making appearances.

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Most Popular Festivals in United Kingdom 2016

It’s an upset here as Bestival (#1) usurps the expected Glastonbury (#3) for the top spot, and V Festival (#2) snags the runner-up prize. The festival buzzword of 2016 was “boutique festivals”, and the UK continues the trend with festivals like Secret Garden Party (#7), Festival No. 6 (#10), Kendal Calling (#19), and others making their mark on the MFWizard50.

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How we compiled these rankings: This data was taken from visitors to Music Festival Wizard between July 1, 2015 thru December 31, 2016. We measured the pageviews of each festival’s guide on our website (example: the MFW Coachella Festival Guide).

Correction (1/12/17): A previous edition of the Europe MFW50 was missing Sziget Festival at #15. This has been added and the list adjusted accordingly.