Wacken Open Air

Wacken Open Air is a summer open-air heavy metal music festival. It takes place annually in the village of Wacken in Schleswig-Holstein, northern Germany, northwest of Hamburg.The festival was first held in 1990 as a small event for local German bands. W:O:A is usually held at the beginning of August and lasts four days. It is currently considered the biggest heavy-metal festival in the world. In 2011, the festival attracted 80,000 festival visitors and 6,000 personnel for a total of roughly 86,000 attendees.The festival traditionally ends on the first Sunday in August, and at midnight the following Monday tickets go on sale for the next year. Remarkably, all 75,000 tickets were sold out within 43 hours for 2014, 12 hours for 2015, and 23 hours for 2016, despite the fact that the lineup had not been announced. The non-optional basic ticket price for all four days, including camping, was €220 in 2017 and will be for 2018 as well. In 2015, 158 bands were playing on eight stages. The international significance of the festival is shown by the attendees in recent years being 30% foreigners, with up to 10% non-Europeans, from about 30-40 different countries all around the world. Many metal fans travel from half a world away just to stand in cow meadows before stages set in the middle of nowhere. In 2017, an official count confirmed visitors from over 80 different nations at the festival.Dozens of bands have recorded their live acts at W:O:A on video and sell them on DVD or Blu-ray, and of course audio CDs; bands such as Scorpions, Deep Purple, Judas Priest, Alice Cooper, Twisted Sister, Saxon, Motörhead, Heaven & Hell, Europe, Dream Theater, Nightwish, Rose Tattoo, Ministry, Savatage, Tygers of Pan Tang, Airbourne, Sabaton, Dimmu Borgir, Immortal, Emperor, Running Wild, Circle II Circle, At the Gates, Sacred Reich, Grave Digger, Rage, Danko Jones, Avantasia, Unisonic, Hansen & Friends, Hypocrisy, Die Apokalyptischen Reiter, Bloodbath, Atheist, Exodus, Megaherz, Gorgoroth, God Seed, Atrocity, Degradead, and Arch Enemy. These bands' appearances and the international crowds they draw have made W:O:A famous in the global metal community. A lot of metalheads, metal and hard rock bands worldwide are keen to make the journey to "The Mekka of Heavy Metal Culture", "The Holy Land", "The Cathedral of Heavy Medal", or "The Summit of Heavy Metal" at least once in their lifetime, just for the experience. In 2017, people from about 150 countries used the H360°, V360° VR, HD, stream offer by a sponsor to watch, live, online, some concerts, the festival or the village. This worldwide innovation to record an entire festival in °360 VR was piloted at W:O:A by Sam Dunn and a VR Camera team first time in 2016. Many remote-enabled, fixed view records, without using a VR headset, are already available on different video platforms, including German public television broadcast services, in 2017.