Get ready for an upgraded festival city with new experiences, new gathering spots and new stages:
The stages Apollo, Avalon and Gaia will bow out, two entirely new music stages and neighbourhoods will emerge, and none other than the Orange Stage will return in a new and larger version.
Roskilde Festival is a festival in motion. We renew ourselves because the times call for it – and because we want to give you and the artists the strongest possible setting to meet in.
That’s why we continuously develop the stages so they reflect contemporary trends and create intimacy, discovery and the biggest, collective moments.
The 2026 renewals are especially about creating a more coherent festival city with better flow, new meeting points and a clearer connection between the eastern and western parts of the site.
Here’s your first glimpse of our plans for next year’s festival city:
On the west side of the festival site, a brand-new seven-day area will appear, with two stages combining to create a balanced and vibrant urban space. The aim is to give you more concerts, more atmosphere and new places to hang out – from the first days until the festival’s closing moments.
You already know the open-air stage Eos, which returns in full force in ’26. The other western stage will carry forward Avalon’s special, theatre-like intimacy.
We’re holding back the name for now, but expect a scalable, covered tent stage: close and concentrated during the First Days, then fully expanded in the Final Days with space for around 5,000 guests.
If you’ve been a fan of Avalon, you’ll rediscover its spirit and intimacy in a new setting on the western side of the site.
In the north-eastern corner of the festival site, close to The Garden, Gloria and the Food Court, a new area will emerge, surrounded by grass and treetops. And right at the centre, you’ll find a new intimate covered tent stage with capacity for around 2,000 guests.
The ambition is for the stage – which we haven’t yet named – to blend into its surroundings and feel like a natural part of the landscape. We’re working with ideas for scenography, screens and decoration that will stretch the stage space beyond the tent and create atmosphere both beneath the canvas and in interplay with the nature outside.
If you’ve loved the concerts at the Gaia stage, you’ll recognise the atmosphere here – in new surroundings with even stronger technical and aesthetic possibilities for both artists and audience.
Orange Stage has been our largest stage since 1978. And in 2026, the time has finally come to inaugurate a brand-new and modern interpretation of the iconic tent structure (the fourth version of the stage, in fact).
Of course, we’ll keep the familiar design with the orange canvas and the tall arches, so the upgrade will be both a tribute to tradition and a response to the needs and possibilities of today’s music landscape.
The new stage space beneath the orange canopy will be around 30 percent higher than before. This offers better conditions and entirely new technical possibilities for playing with light, sound and scenography.
The Orange Stage will host the most ambitious shows of the future, delivering the strongest concert experiences to both the artists – and you and your friends out there in the crowd.
The renewal also means saying farewell to Apollo, which since 2012 has been home to urban, club-oriented, electronic and progressive experiences in the evening and night hours.
But the trends you know from Apollo won’t disappear with its departure. On the contrary.
Today, these currents are shaping big concerts on the Orange and Arena stages, and they’re present at the intersections of hip hop, pop, metal and experimental sound.
Rather than having their own secluded corner, these styles will now take up a more natural and prominent place across all the festival city’s stages.
The goodbye to Apollo doesn’t mean fewer experiences. The total programme in 2026 will hold about as many shows as in previous years.
But we’ll distribute the concerts in a way that creates better flow and new encounters between genres – so even more guests get the chance to explore electronic and urban sounds.
We’ll launch ticket sales for RF26 at the end of October. At that time, we’ll also add the first names to the line-up – so get ready to be excited!
