At Roskilde Festival, community also emerges in the unexpected moments, when you dance with strangers, build layer cake on a skateboard, look for love in the festival garden or give yourself over to an activist climbing session.
Everyday life at Roskilde Festival’s camping area is nothing like the one you know from home. Here, an afternoon can begin with plant speed dating in GROW, continue with layer cake building at Skate and end with vampire films in the dark.
During First Days, from 27 June to 30 June, Roskilde Festival offers roller disco, rappelling, wedding waltz, climate-friendly pizza, plant dating and unexpected experiences that can appear when you least expect them. The programme sparks curiosity and invites you to try something you may never have tried before.
You can come alone, bring a friend or gather the whole camp. What matters is not whether you are good at it. What matters is that you join in.
Scroll down and explore the programme.
Drop by Skate when Hal 12 presents Lagkage Deathrace, a discipline where skateboarding, speed and layer cake building come together, like The Great British Bake Off with the volume turned up.
You enter in teams of two, and points are awarded for looks, taste and speed. In other words, you need to ride fast and build a cake that holds together. You can also simply get ready to cheer from the sidelines.
Behind the event is Hal 12, a skate and event hall in Roskilde and a community for volunteers and skaters of all ages.
Lagkage Deathrace. Tuesday 30 June at 16:00, Skate
It is never too early or too late to learn the wedding waltz. Bring your festival flirt, a friend from camp or come alone and find a dance partner on the floor.
When Folkehuset Absalon invites you to a wedding waltz at Dancefloor, instructor Paula Yau will guide you through the classic steps, so everyone can join in. It is not about doing it perfectly, but about having fun together.
For more than 10 years, Absalon has created spaces for community through everything from communal dinners to dance parties and workshops. At Roskilde Festival, they bring that community out into the open air.
Wedding waltz. Monday 29 June at 15:00, Dancefloor
Put on your finest outfit and join in when the roller disco rolls into the festival. Here, you can dance on wheels to great music as the sun goes down and the mood slowly builds.
New to wheels? People will be ready to help, and you can borrow both roller skates and glitter for free. The roller disco begins with a short Bladeshow on the ramps before the dancefloor opens.
Behind the party is Tanja Zabell, who has spent more than 20 years bringing energy to dancefloors around the world with her roller skates and presence.
Roller disco. Sunday 28 June, Monday 29 June and Tuesday 30 June at 18:15, Skate
Are you crisp as a radish, wise as a bonsai or just a quiet potato? In the festival garden GROW, you can meet new people at plant speed dating, where herbs and vegetables set the scene.
You solve small garden tasks together and get time to talk along the way. It is a simple and relaxed way to meet someone you did not already know, right in the middle of the festival’s shared garden.
GROW is an experience space at Roskilde Festival where food, cultivation and community meet. Here, you can take part, learn something new and take a break from the festival’s wonderful whirl.
Plant speed dating. Monday 29 June and Tuesday 30 June at 16:00, GROW
When artist Johanne Anastasia Stoffersen invites you to Creams n’ Dreams, The Yard is transformed into a cornucopia of cream cakes, shots and collective rococo chaos.
The performance party unfolds around a large three-tier cake stand, while three performers in white wedding-baroque-club outfits circulate through the extravagant universe. The atmosphere balances between the decadent and the sickly.
Everyone can step forward and take part in the serving, or gather around the table and watch the performance as the cream-fuelled feast takes over.
Creams n’ Dreams. Monday 29 June and Tuesday 30 June at 14:15, The Yard
This year, Roskilde Festival gets its very own cinema, Cinema. Fittingly, darkness falls over the programme with late-night vampire films.
You can experience Carl Th. Dreyer’s nightmarish Vampyr from 1932 with newly written music performed live. Or you can watch the Swedish classic Let the Right One In, which blends bloody murders, loneliness, bullying and a tender friendship between two children in a cold suburb.
Here, there is room for chills, community and a completely different festival atmosphere from the one you find in front of the stages.
Let the Right One In (2008). Monday 29 June at 23:00, Cinema
Can you cut down on meat without compromising on flavour? In the workshop En slice for klimaet, you can put together your own climate-friendly pizza and explore your own taste preferences.
Along the way, you will work with ingredients, food habits and small choices that can make a difference. Flavour is at the centre, but the pizza also opens up a conversation about how we eat in a time of climate crisis.
The workshop is part of Life Lab, where you can also test your strength, measure your pulse and explore your senses through hands-on activities.
En slice for klimaet. Sunday 28 June, Monday 29 June and Tuesday 30 June at 13:00, The Yard
In Action Village in Camping West, Greenpeace invites you to try activism as something concrete, creative and physical.
Here, you can meet activists, hang out and get insight into how small actions can help create change. You can try climbing with Greenpeace instructors and experience how the body can be used as an activist tool.
You can also work with craftivism and stencil printing, where craft, street art and activism meet. Bring a piece of clothing that needs an update and make your own mark with a stencil design created for Roskilde Festival by the British street artist Bambi.
Greenpeace can be experienced in Action Village in Camping West
Workshop: Craftivism – Creativity as Resistance. Sunday 28 June at 12:30, Action Village