After fifty years, most festivals either disappear entirely or inevitably become unrecognisable from their origins. The latter is definitely the case when it comes to Rock Werchter, with their 50th anniversary perhaps proving that this is no bad thing.

Starting up as a modest local event in 1975 as the Werchter Rock and Blues Festival, rooted far more in community rather than spectacle, Werchter has evolved into the giant of the European festival circuit it is today - which undoubtedly rivals, and arguably trumps, its counterparts across the continent both in mainland Europe and in the UK.

Beginning just five years prior, Glastonbury bears some striking similarities to Rock Werchter in terms of its infancy and exponential growth. Both festivals have grown, that’s for sure, but whilst Worthy Farm has catapulted into a vast, temporary metropolis pushed by the backing of the BBC in the late 90s, Werchter has taken a different path. Throughout the past fifty years, it has been defined by steady and carefully considered expansion, rather than an all-consuming pursuit of size and dominance.

Reaching its half-century in 2025, Rock Werchter doesn’t feel like a monument to its past, nor does it feel like a victim of its own success. It feels uniquely balanced, learning from its rich history to improve year by year, in a way that centres around its patrons to produce an experience that you just can’t replicate anywhere else. With lineups across Europe’s majors being so similar (as bands and artists cycle between cities throughout the short festival season), I feel nowadays its so crucial for festivals to have an identity - something that is unique to that festival regardless of the acts, the stages or the merchandise. Werchter has that. I’ve no idea what 'that' is; it’s intangible and indescribable, however it felt so obvious from the second I walked through the gate of Festivalpark Werchter at midday on the 3rd July 2025. I just knew things were about to happen and that I was exactly where I needed to be.

Rewind about fifteen hours and I’m having an obligatory calm before the storm moment, sat in a cheap hotel room in the north end of Brussels with a six-pack of Juplier and pouring over the festival timetable. Watching the mundane scene out of the window as trains arrive and depart from Brussels-Nord Station, carrying city workers home from their jobs in finance and HR, I pass the time in my headphones listening to unknown acts I might go and have a look at. I’m thinking about how differently the platform is going to look just hours from now. Gone will be the suits and in their place will be the oversized backpacks and bucket hats of the festival goers on route to Leuven, Werchter’s nearest station. My mind takes me back a year earlier, when I went to the festival for the first time in 2024. Memories of being front and centre for The Hives and Royal Blood come flooding back; I’m like a kid at Christmas and all I want to do is get on that train. I won’t be sleeping tonight, nor the next four.

Doing an entire four-day solo festival outside of your home country seemed quite daunting to me the year before. Even then I was no stranger to solo travel by any means, but there’s something about a music festival that brings strangers together, forcing interaction in an almost intimate way that I didn’t know if I could be arsed with. Second time around, however, those feelings are long gone. What once felt like a leap into the unknown now feels almost reassuring and freeing. I know I’m about to spent the next four nights in a field in the middle of rural Belgium, where I don’t know anybody in the crowd but we all know who’s on stage.

That sense of community began long before I was anywhere near the Festivalpark, on a packed platform at Brussels-Nord the night before. For me, the train platform has always been where festivals really begin - not with headliners or wristbands, but with waiting. Bags too big, beers too early, and strangers united by a shared destination: the festival.

This platform turned out to be the first of many examples I’d see over the next four days of how festivals are a universal idea in a world that is becoming more divided by the day. I’ve been inside of this very scene all over the continent countless times, both in familiar places and in new cities I’ve been visiting. The buzz of the train platform prior to the opening of a festival is a phenomenon in its own right; you can feel the excitement for what’s about to come and the apphrension of just wanting to be there. It’s not even started yet but in another way, it already has.

Platform 7 of Brussels-Nord could have been anywhere at a glance. I could have been standing on the dreaded platform 13 of Manchester Piccadilly on route to Warrington for Neighbourhood Weekender, or at Budapest Keleti heading to Filatorigát for Sziget Festival. Sure, languages vary, but the sight and feel remain the same. A multitude of dialects can be heard, but it’s not nationalities or languages that stood out to me at all; what was more obvious was how people from completely different places can be so alike, without even realising. All kinds of groups were boarding the train eastbound: groups of local teenagers with their friends, lads from all across the place on the cans already, and then there’s the people like me, the solo travellers, all equally excited for the stories we’re about to form over the next few days. We all know the lineup, but none of us know the tales we’ll tell off the back of it. Not yet.

Anticipation intensifies with every meter of track covered, and by the time we reach Leuven it’s even more palpable. Trains carrying festival-goers are arriving in force now, and what began with a packed platform of like-minded individuals has grown into a full town. Trains inbound from across the Benelux sprawl in, originating from Maastricht, Liège, Ghent, Amsterdam, Köln - it doesn’t matter anymore, we’re all here now.

Free shuttle buses between Leuven and Werchter run frequently throughout the festival, and like many people I deliberately arrived in Leuven early after learning from experiences the year before. With any major festival, especially if you’re planning on making it your home for the best part of a week, arriving in peak times can lead to frustrating experiences. It’s only 10am by the time I’ve got off the bus at Werchter, and giving myself the extra couple of hours early on was one of the best decisions I made during this trip. A year prior I’d made the mistake of arriving early in the afternoon, leading to long queues and a stressful situation of potentially missing one of the acts I was most exited to see, The Hives (which I fortunately just made).

This time around was much more relaxed, giving me time to take everything in and truly realise just how vast this place is. The beating heart of Rock Werchter is its Festivalpark, the mammoth area where the stages and the music are actually located. Truthfully, however, this is just the tip of the iceberg when considering how much of any festival exists beyond the glow of the main stage. Of course, any memorable festival experience is centred around its music, but they also undoubtedly include the places you camp, wake and wander as much as where you stand and listen.

Camping

Werchter has ample options when it comes to accommodation, offering something for everyone and catering to all budgets. The cheapest camping pitches begin at around €40 as an add on to your festival ticket, which is insanely cheap. Obviously, this is the no-thrills option, simply giving you unallocated access to a field to pitch your own tent. Showers will cost you extra here and there’s no on-site options to purchase food or drink, but at this price you really can’t argue. Pitches in this price category include three separate sites - A1, C3 and C7 - which are identical in terms of what you get for your money. However, if you’re going for this option I’d highly recommend opting for site A1, purely because of its location. Site A1 is the prime real estate of this category, being the closest to the Festivalpark itself. It's practically across the road from the main gates, and has the added bonus of being in close proximity to the many local street vendors that line the main road up to the Festivalpark, granting much easier access to food and drink outside of the park itself.

Despite the unbelievably low cost of these options, if there is one recommendation for any aspect of this festival I could give it would be to spend the extra bit of cash and get yourself a ticket to the festival’s flagship campsite, The Hive. Believe me when I say, this is where it’s at.

To call The Hive a campsite is a serious understatement, it’s effectively its own village. The Hive is not simply somewhere to sleep, it is Rock Werchter’s second pulse. While the Festivalpark may host the music, The Hive hosts the hours that surround it, both prior to the day’s live sets and what follows after the guitars and drum kits have been packed away. By day it feels communal: slow morning, coffee queues, people piecing themselves together after the heavy night before. Then as evening turns to night, it transforms entirely. Once the final chords fade in the Festivalpark, The Hive becomes something louder, messier and far more alive, an after-hours release valve where energy that has nowhere else to go spills out until the early hours. It is this ability to shape-shift from calm to chaos, from recovery zone to afterparty, that makes The Hive feel less like a campsite and more like a true 24-hour environment. I’ve always thought of the Hive as Werchter’s sixth stage. Its central feature is its huge covered DJ barn, which carries the festival long after the final live acts have finished, and feels like it's been designed not as an afterthought but as a continuation. Here, tired legs find a second wind and the night takes on a life of its own into the morning for those who want.

Camping wise, the Hive caters for all. Entry starts at just short of €80 for unreserved pitches in the main camping area (based on 2 people sharing 1 tent), which all things considered is an absolute steal. Personally, I decided to treat myself to one of the upgraded options, opting for a pre-pitched tent in the “My Space” campsite. If you’re travelling into the festival from overseas like I was, I wouldn’t shy away from the higher price tag of the more premium pre-pitched options offered here, and factoring in other costs this option isn’t as pricey as it sounds. Think of it this way: if you want to pitch your own tent at The Hive then you’re going to have to get that tent, along with sleeping bags and ground mats etc, over into Belgium. Chances are that all that gear isn’t fitting in a carry on bag, meaning additional costs of checking bags into the hold.

A bit of practical advice coming up for anyone who’s interested: for UK travellers, travelling to the festival by air realistically means flying into one of two airports. Logistically, the easiest option is to fly directly to Brussels, but low-cost budget airlines simply don’t fly there due to high operational costs. This leaves with two options - fly with Brussels Airlines from Manchester if you’re up north or head to Heathrow to catch the British Airways service if you’re down south - both are hellishly expensive. That leaves the alternative option, Charleroi, which brands itself as Brussels’ “Southern Airport”. This is a massive stretch considering Charleroi is a city in its own right. It’s pretty much the equivalent of calling Liverpool's John Lennon “Manchester West”. Flying to Charleroi is dirt cheap thanks to good old Ryanair, my outbound flight from Manchester setting me back just £32. Even factoring in the €20 it costs for the coach between Charleroi and Brussels, it’s still significantly cheaper than flying to Brussels directly.

I can’t talk about the Hive without mentioning what might be my favourite little place in the entire festival grounds, Café De Welkom. In the mornings, this is exactly what it says on the tin; a place to grab some hungover breakfast before heading back into the park. Don’t be fooled by the croissants or the coffee, though. Whilst you’re off enjoying the music, Café De Welkom is transforming just like the rest of the Hive into its second form, ready to receive whatever state you’ve ended up in during the past twelve hours. The Hive’s true after-hours party gets going over with the DJs less than a hundred meters away that’s for sure, but if you’re looking for something to pass that weird interim period between the wind down of the headliners and the power up of what comes after, let the Café Welkom you.

One of my favourite memories of this trip was in this very spot, not quite ready to call it a night but also knowing I wasn’t gonna hang on till the Hive truly got going. Whilst pondering whether or not I was gonna head back to my tent, my attention was captured by the sounds of a crowd belting a rendition of Queen’s 'Bohemian Rhapsody' coming from the Cafe. Naturally, I poked my head in, and was immediately embraced by the chaos. Every table was packed, everyone was standing on up on them, arms around strangers’ shoulders, shouting every word back at one another. Before I had any real say in the matter, I was hauled up onto a table myself, joining the unspoken rule that nobody was allowed to touch the floor until Freddie’s final notes rang out.

Having travelled a fair amount of miles by the time I reached Werchter, it came across slightly ironic that the people in the tent next to mine weren’t from some distant far away land, but instead hailed from the city of Leeds. Brilliant. Having the extra time before the festival gates opened meant that my pre-festival experience was probably one of the most relaxed I’ve ever had. As the check-in queues were building I had the opportunity to just stand in the middle of a waking Hive with a couple of cans and observe before heading down to the main event before most people had even arrived.

Stages

When it comes to festivals, especially of this magnitude, I’m a great believer in the early bird catching the worm. Acts you might not have heard of prior to them appearing on the lineup often lead to new found favourites you’d wouldn't have discovered otherwise. Part of my aim going into this was to do exactly that, to use this opportunity of having so many acts available and listen to a few things that were outside of my usual scope. The experience later resulted in some of the best memories of the festival, and some new additions to my playlists.

Earlier sets exist in this strange, forgiving, space. Outside of those die hard fans that have got down early just for them, most people aren’t there for the band - they’re just there. Curiosity almost replaces expectation. The hype of watching a headliner is absent, instead replaced by a chance to excite and recruit. While the later sets centre around the artists you know and love, early sets allow you space to learn who you’ll grow to love. At the end of the day, they’re included in the price of the ticket.

The ten minute walk between the Hive and the Festivalpark is a feeling in itself, creating a sort of electricity and sense of anticipation that I felt completely familiar with. Aside from live music live music, the only thing that truly gets me going is live sport, and walking down towards the festival gates felt eerily similar to the sensation I get approaching a rugby ground or cricket stadium. That match day feeling has always been inexpressible to me; the slow build, the crowd thickening, the sense that everyone around you understands exactly why they're here, and it was the same in the blazing heat of a Belgian July. A different country, different reason, but the same sense of belonging as I get striding down Talbot Lane back in Manchester to watch my beloved Lancashire Cricket Club.

Gates opened a full hour before acts were scheduled to play, I was intentionally in nice and early to have a wander about before any music ensued. The importance of a festival's layout and design can’t be understated, as there’s a fine line between being safe and boring, and overwhelming confusion. The way Werchter uses its immense space is nothing short of genius; despite its physical size with five stages crammed into the same area, it is feel spacious and is simple to get a grasp on. This is one of the main reasons I feel Werchter is so criminally underrated. Compared to other super-festivals, it is a much less overwhelming space for an absolute fraction of the price. You'll get the same big names showing their faces in the later slots, and the same sense of discovery across all five stages earlier in the day. I mentioned Glastonbury earlier, admittedly a festival I’ve never made it to (not through lack of trying). Although I’d bite your hand off at any sniff of a ticket, I can’t help feeling that bigger isn’t always better.

Take a bigger festival that I have been to, Sziget Festival in Budapest, which has around fifty performance spaces across the “Island of Freedom”. I probably saw about twenty percent of what was on offer during my stay there, and outside of the main stages I found the layout confusing and extremely difficult to navigate. Much like Glastonbury, Sziget has grown into much more than just a music festival. Realistically, I have to ask myself, do I want to spent the limited time I have at a music festival watching novelty circus acts, contemporary dance or stand up comedy when I could be discovering new music? For me that’s a strong no. With Werchter, none of those gimmicks exist. Its perfect size allows for easy traverse, meaning that you can go from checking in on a band you’ve never heard of to getting in a decent position for a chart-topping act on the opposite side of the park without any real difficulties.

Werchter’s structure is arguably its greatest trait. As with any other festival, everything is centred around the main stage, which is the first thing you’ll come across upon entering the park’s main gates. It can be difficult for a main stage to have any distinguishing characteristics because, by design, it is just a big fuck off platform in an even bigger field. Straight away, Werchter’s main stage towers above Belgium’s famously flat landscape like some kind of futuristic spaceship, truly making a statement. Sure, for 360 days of the year this area of the country doesn’t see much action, but you better believe action is about to occur now. Werchter, along with its 160k visitors, has landed. The main stage looks almost offensively out of place, which kind of embodies the attitude that would be adopted over the next four days.

Beyond the main stage lies Werchter’s indoor arenas, twin stages named “The Barn” and “Klub C”. The Barn is the larger of the two, with a capacity of 20,000. Just as a reminder, this is a temporary structure at a festival which is capable of holding more than most actual arenas across Europe. It's enormous in a way that really can’t be appreciated until you take a walk inside. For comparison, Glastonbury’s flagship indoor arena “Woodies” maxes out at just 12k. Being an indoor stage, acts inevitably feel more intimate, but the monster scale of The Barn makes you feel like you’re seeing a standalone headline show in its own right. The music has nowhere to go but into the room, and everyone inside it feels closer as a result.

Upon first glance, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Klub C was just a smaller version of The Barn, but nothing could be further from the truth. While The Barn and Klub C share the intimacy that comes with being indoors, they serve very different musical purposes that coexist perfectly. The Barn hosts more traditional setups, centred around guitar driven acts and acting as the hub for indie and rock within the festival. By contrast, Klub C leans into a completely different set of genres; electronic artists, experimental pop, hip-hop and acts that thrive on atmosphere rather than force. Where The Barn amplifies intensity, Klub C encourages curiosity, offering a setting that favours detail, texture and nuance. These two sister stages were never designed to compete, only complement, and it works perfectly. Klub C is rarely going to provide the moshpits and all out carnage of The Barn, nor will The Barn ever capture the very different vibes seen just across the way.

In complete contrast to the confines of the indoor stages, Werchter’s secondary outdoor space embraces its openness, feeling like more of a shared vantage point rather than a stage. “The Slope” is perhaps the most diverse setting of them all. What it lacks in theme it more than makes up for in character, being a natural amphitheatre that encourages lingering rather than urgency. Situated in the middle grounds between the main stage and indoor arenas, The Slope wears many hats. It acts as an organic meeting ground and release valve for the festival, as well as a functional performance space. The Slope’s positioning means that it gets the inevitable foot traffic as people wander between stages, creating the opportunity for accidental discovery. With no set plan, I found myself stopping here much more than once, pulled in by music I hadn’t intended to hear and staying far longer than expected. I’ve not touched on the acts I saw yet but personally, this area became my reminder that some of the best festival moments aren’t planned whilst sitting in some cheap hotel room in the arse end of Brussels, with a six-pack of Juplier and looking at a train station. Sometimes they just happen by chance. All the design and detail ultimately funnels into the same thing, the reason we are all here: the music itself…

Stay tuned for part 2!