The death has taken place of Summer 2025. Family flowers only please, donations welcome for a weekend away to Newcastle in November. Its final resting place is Stradbally, and like any good Irish wake, it was one hell of a party.
Over twenty years since its inception, Electric Picnic continues to grow and grow with every passing year, with global superstars among the eighty thousand attendees. With comparisons to Coachella and Glastonbury adding more pressure every year, is the Picnic continuing to live up to the hype?
First of all, we have to address the waterproof elephant in the room; the weather. Doomsayers and schadenfreude enthusiasts relished in sharing forecasts of washouts, gale force winds, and hurricanes (I mean, seriously?), and the result? A few showers, a bit of wind on Sunday morning, and wellies that took up way too much space in the luggage. 2022, this was not.
The Picnic rewards those who are willing to wander around the site, and to name every weird and wonderful act I saw this weekend would require a book deal. The festival feels like a kaleidoscope of craic; at one point, you're doing the Hot To Go dance with over fifty thousand people in a field on a Friday night; at the next, you’re dancing to "Stop The World And Let Me Off" with a load of builders who seemed to have stumbled across a set of DJ decks.
One surprisingly emotional highlight of the weekend was Neven Maguire's back-to-back set with Marcus O’Laoire. This was Neven’s first time performing as a DJ at a festival, saying he felt like he was at his own wedding day again. The tent was packed with cookbook collectors, curious ravers, and bystanders all dancing together to Solarstones’ "Seven Cities", a song that reminded Neven of baking bread with his father. It elevated what could have been a normal DJ set into a beautiful celebration of food and music.
Aside from Chappell Roan's Friday night show-stopper, the set that got the most attention was, of course, Kneecap on the main stage (much to the dismay of Dara O'Briain, who was clashing with them at his first ever Picnic performance). This was the point where the festival really shone, in my eyes. With every person on their friends shoulders, with every flag in the air, and with the level of muck being thrown around in the mosh pit, this set felt the most like something you would see at a festival like Glastonbury. Having personally seen the lads in front of fifty people in Gaoth Dobhair in 2018, this felt like a victory lap for a group that had been repeatedly told there was no interest in Irish-language hip-hop music.
88,056 steps later, and the festival is over for yet another year. With pre-sale tickets for 2026 already sold out, it’s clear that the demand for the festival will continue to grow and grow. With massive mainstream appeal, one question remains on everyone’s lips; who is going to be standing on that main stage this time next year?
