At Roskilde Festival, you can meet magical queer fairies, take the long way round, step into a safer space and experience art that makes room for more bodies, voices and ways of being together.
This year’s Art & Activism programme presents a range of artworks, performances and workshops that explore care as something we create together. Here, community is not about everyone being the same, but about creating frameworks where differences can meet with curiosity, respect and empathy.
You can take the long way up a spiral-shaped ramp, step into a sensory space for queer meditation, experience the collective energy of dancehall culture, meet young voices from Taastrupgaard and see how music, dance and performance can open up new ways of being together.
Scroll down and explore the programme.
Around the hill by Dancefloor in Camping East, The Long Way Around winds all the way to the top. The work resembles an oversized ramp and is designed to make the way up easier for many different bodies.
It is a long, slow and sensory route to the top, where seating and a gathering place with a fire await – an ideal spot for a break from the festival buzz.
The British artist Jesse Darling created the work together with Roskilde Festival in 2025, and this year you can experience it again at the festival site.
The Long Way Around can be experienced by the hill at Dancefloor.
In a green area surrounded by trees, you will find Rehearsals of Belonging 2.0, an artistic pavilion created by visual artist Bartek Arobal Kociemba and architect Mikkel Nielsen.
The installation functions as a safer space where art, activism and spirituality merge. Here, you can experience queer meditation, sensory workshops and interactive performances that invite calm, reflection and immersion.
Every day, the transition from day to evening is marked by an electronic light bath created by the Polish composer, producer and performer Stefan Węgłowski.
Rehearsals of Belonging 2.0 can be experienced throughout the festival.
Artist Sahar Jamili creates a collective artwork together with young people from the Taastrupgaard housing area in Høje Taastrup. Under the title Vores drømme om i morgen, they explore how art can bring people together and shape identity through stories.
Through creative writing, sound recordings, found objects and walks through the festival city, experiences, memories and perspectives on life as a young person are woven together into a diverse shared story about dreams and hopes for the future.
No one yet knows where the story will end. Perhaps something will emerge that no one had imagined.
Vores drømme om i morgen can be experienced at Roskilde Festival.
The air fills with celebration and magic when Feerne land at the festival site and transform everyday life into a glittering, grotesque fairy universe of wings, megaphones, magic wands and costumes.
Feerne appear when you least expect them. Between concerts, in the toilet queue, in a corner of the site or just after you have lost the people you came with. They play music, perform magic, improvise, stage small cabarets and disappear again before you have time to ask where they are going.
Behind Feerne is a queer ensemble with a vision to hand the microphone to everyday magical antiheroes.
Feerne. Tuesday 30 June at 15:00, The Yard
Det Åbne Ensemble is an orchestra made up of users of psychiatric services, where everyone can take part regardless of musical experience. The focus is not on a classical concert, but on the process: a creative and safe space in constant transformation.
When the ensemble takes over Platform, instruments such as double bass, vibraphone, synthesiser and piano are ready on stage. In front of each instrument is a lamp. When the light turns on, the music begins.
Each improvisation is framed by simple musical constraints, but the work is shaped by the members of the orchestra in the moment. The result is a living shared space where contributions are met, amplified and brought into play by others.
Det Åbne Ensemble. Saturday 4 July at 11:45, Platform
1Guh Watch brings the raw, playful force of dancehall culture to Roskilde Festival. At Platform, they gather internationally recognised Jamaican artists in a performance that celebrates creativity, attitude and community.
Through choreography created in the moment, the dancers let movement, rhythm and presence unfold naturally. Expect vibrant energy, catchy music and dancers whose joy in movement is infectious.
During First Days, you can try dancehall yourself in a workshop at Dancefloor, where 1Guh Watch will share their moves.
Dancehall workshop. Tuesday 30 June at 12:30, Dancefloor
1Guh Watch. Wednesday 1 July at 20:45 and Thursday 2 July at 21:00, Platform
Dressed in A4 documents highlighted with marker pen, a masked figure takes over Platform’s 360-degree open stage with the words: “I feel like a piece of paper. I’m a couple of thousand papers long.”
The documents come from artist Noah Umur Kanber’s own encounters with the public system and bear witness to the bureaucratic and unfeeling processes she experienced during her childhood.
In the performance I feel like a piece of paper, Noah Umur Kanber reclaims her story and invites you into a ceremony about vulnerability, anger, humour and care between strangers.
I feel like a piece of paper. Thursday 2 July at 13:30, Platform
At a time when you can feel paralysed and unable to move, Heart To Ride insists on movement rather than stillness.
Dancer and choreographer Joana Öhlschläger brings together a group of dancers in an unusual cardio performance, where they explore how we can sustain and affect each other’s energy through shifts, contact and distance.
Let yourself be swept up by the team spirit as the work trains presence, sensitivity and community like a muscle.
Joana Öhlschläger. Thursday 2 July at 15:00 and Friday 3 July at 17:15, Platform
You are welcome to move into Anna Walther’s artwork Who’s Gonna Do the Dirty Jobs, When Everyone Is Equal?, but we cannot guarantee that you will not get dirty.
The work consists of a layer of mud that you have to brave in order to reach the climbing frame in the middle. The festival mud becomes a physical image of the injustice that can arise when the idea of equality meets the real world.
The question is simple and difficult at the same time: who does the dirty work if everyone is equal?
Who’s Gonna Do the Dirty Jobs, When Everyone Is Equal? is presented in collaboration with Art Hub Copenhagen.
