Festivals in the Netherlands: A Month-by-Month Calendar

Festival calendar by month

Summer: the polder weekenders

Two of the country's biggest festivals share the same site type — the flat, reclaimed farmland of the Flevoland polder, where there is room for a festival ground and a temporary city of tents next to it. Lowlands, held since 1993 near Biddinghuizen, runs over three days in late August and mixes rock, pop, dance and hip-hop with comedy, film, theatre and science talks; its full name, "A Campingflight to Lowlands Paradise", is the clue that camping is not optional but the point. Defqon.1, at the same location each June, is the flagship event of the harder styles of electronic music and draws an international crowd for its main-stage productions.

Down The Rabbit Hole, in early July at a lakeside site at Beuningen near Nijmegen, is the smaller, more curated sibling of Lowlands — same promoter, more adventurous booking, theatre and visual art alongside the music. Awakenings, running since 1997, splits itself between an indoor event series and large open-air techno editions at sites around the country in summer.

Weekend tickets for all of these routinely sell out well before the line-up is finished, which is the opposite of how most people expect festival ticketing to work. If a specific year matters, buy in the on-sale window rather than waiting to see who is playing.

• Lowlands — festival hub
• Defqon.1 — festival hub
• Down The Rabbit Hole — festival hub
• Awakenings — festival hub

Summer in the cities, winter on screen

North Sea Jazz Festival is the city-based counterweight to the polder weekenders. Founded in 1976 in The Hague and held at the Ahoy complex in Rotterdam since 2006, it runs across three days each July with concerts on more than a dozen stages simultaneously, and its programme reaches well past jazz into soul, funk, blues and hip-hop. It is indoors, which makes it the most weather-proof large festival in the country.

The colder half of the year is film and discovery season. January brings Eurosonic Noorderslag to Groningen, where the city's venues turn into a showcase circuit for new European acts, and the International Film Festival Rotterdam to Rotterdam at the end of the same month. In September the national film festival takes over Utrecht, and November stacks three different things in three cities: cross-genre programming at Le Guess Who? in Utrecht, documentary film at IDFA in Amsterdam, and a light-art trail through Eindhoven at GLOW.

• North Sea Jazz Festival — festival hub
• Events in Rotterdam
• Events in Utrecht
• Events in Groningen
• Events in The Hague

King's Day, the one date everyone plans around

King's Day — Koningsdag — is on 27 April, and it is the largest single day in the Dutch calendar by a distance. The one exception to the date is built into the rule: when 27 April falls on a Sunday, the holiday moves to the 26th. Cities close streets, canals fill with boats, and the whole country wears orange.

It is also the one day when the informal street market rules are suspended and anyone can sell anything on the pavement, which is why the day starts with a nationwide flea market rather than with music. If you are travelling for it, book accommodation months ahead and expect trains into the major cities to be extremely busy.

FAQ

Which festivals in the Netherlands are the best known?

Lowlands and Defqon.1 on the Flevoland polder, North Sea Jazz in Rotterdam, Amsterdam Dance Event across Amsterdam in October, and Awakenings for techno. On the film side, the International Film Festival Rotterdam in January and IDFA in Amsterdam in November are the two largest.

When is festival season in the Netherlands?

The outdoor season runs roughly from late spring into early autumn, peaking in July and August with the camping weekenders. The indoor calendar carries the rest of the year — showcase and film festivals in January, the national film festival in September, and a dense November across several cities.

Do I have to camp at Dutch festivals?

For the large polder festivals such as Lowlands and Defqon.1, camping is how the event is designed and most people stay on site. The city-based festivals — North Sea Jazz, Amsterdam Dance Event, the film festivals — are not camping events, and you stay in the city as normal.

When is King's Day and what happens?

It falls on 27 April, moving to 26 April in any year when the 27th is a Sunday. It is a national holiday: streets and canals fill up, everyone wears orange, and the day opens with a nationwide free market where anyone may sell things in the street. Book accommodation and expect very busy trains.