Tomorrowland
The most iconic festival in the world.
History
2005
The first edition of the festival took place on 14 August 2005. Manu Beers, Michiel Beers and ID&T organized the festival. Performers included Push (M.I.K.E.), Erwin Tang Yew Hon, Armin van Buuren, Cor Fijneman, Yves Deruyter, Technoboy, Yoji Biomehanika and Coone.
2006
The second festival, on 30 July 2006, hosted Armin van Buuren, Axwell, Marco Bailey, Fred Baker, David Guetta, Ruthless and DJ Zany. The DJ and producer Paul Oakenfold was also announced on the poster, but canceled at the last moment, as he was on tour with Madonna at the time. Emjay, the producer of 'Stimulate', the anthem of 2006, performed on the main stage with The Atari Babies.
2007
The third year, the festival lasted two days for the first time in its history, taking place on 28 and 29 July 2007.
2008
In 2008, the festival took place on 26 and 27 July. For the first time, more than 100 DJs participated. The number of visitors exceeded 50,000 for the first time.
2009
Tomorrowland sold out days before the event, with a record attendance of 120,000 visitors over two days, in 2010. Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike and Tara McDonald wrote the official anthem "Tomorrow/Give Into The Night" performing the song twice on the main stage after Swedish House Mafia. The song reached number 5 in the Belgian commercial charts and is the biggest selling anthem for Tomorrowlands to date. The festival's theme was "Zon (Sun)" and was nominated for the Best Music Event by the International Dance Music Awards in 2011.
2011
Tomorrowland 2012 took place 27, 28, 29 July 2012, at Belgium. The line-up consisted of 400 DJs, such as Armin van Buuren, Avicii, David Guetta, Hardwell, , Afrojack, Steve Aoki, , Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike playing on fifteen stages each day. 185,000 people from over 75 countries around the world were in attendance. Because of the enormous success of Tomorrowland and the fact that it is a Belgian festival, ID&T decided to give Belgians an exclusive chance with a pre-sale (80,000 of the 180,000 tickets) on March 24. In less than one day, all of the tickets sold out and at some moments there were 2,000,000 people on the online waiting list. Tomorrowland 2012 also won the DJ Award for the Best International Dance Music Festival.
2013
For the fifth event, ID&T led to even more venues, one ski, and much more. Sun has included an "I Love the 90's" stage, where musicians such as Push, Natural Born Deejays and SASH from the dance scene were present. La Rocca performed live at the event for the first time. The special act on the main stage was Moby. Tomorrowland 2009 took place on 25 and 26 July and attracted 90,000 people. The festival saw the use of a theme for the first time - Mask.
2010
2011 marked the festival's expansion to three days occurring on 22, 23, 24 July. Tomorrowland 2011 had the theme "The Tree of Life" and the anthem "The Way We See The World" by Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike featuring Afrojack and Nervo. Only a few days after the official pre-sale of tickets kicked off Tomorrowland was completely sold out and had over 180,000 visitors. David Guetta, Nervo, Swedish House Mafia, Avicii, Tiësto, Hardwell. It was voted the Best Music Event by the International Dance Music Awards for the first time in 2012.
2012
Tomorrowland 2013 took place on 26 27 28 July and reached 180,000 attendees at Belgium. Full madness passes sold out in 35 minutes, and the remainder of tickets sold out in a reported one second.
Tomorrowland again offered its Global Journey packages with Brussels Airlines which had 140 additional flights from 67 different cities to Belgium. The anthem for Tomorrowland 2013 was "Chattahoochee" by Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike featuring Maarten Vorwerk. This year's edition with the theme "The Arising of Life" saw performances from Axwell, Armin van Buuren, Hardwell, Afrojack, David Guetta.
To celebrate the 9th anniversary of the festival, and to meet the high demand for tickets, the 2014 edition of Tomorrowland would be held over two weekends; 18–20 July and 25–27 July. MTV announced that it would produce two hour-long MTV World Stage specials featuring performances from the festival, and that it would produce a documentary surrounding the 9th anniversary of Tomorrowland.DJ Dave Clark, who hosted the second largest stage, believes that “a more diverse lineup that covered a wider range of underground music” was Tomorrowland 2014's top selling point. Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike again were responsible for the Tomorrowland anthem, this year working with W & W for the song "Waves".360,000 people attended
2014
2015
Tomorrowland 2015 took place on 24, 25, and 26 July 2015 and saw 180,000 visitors. The theme for the year was "The Secret Kingdom of Melodia". Performers included Avicii, Hardwell, David Guetta, Tiësto, Armin van Buuren, and Carl Cox. The 2016 edition of the International Dance Music Awards awarded the Tomorrowland 2015 the Best Global Festival for the fifth consecutive year, and the readers of DJ Magazine voted Tomorrowland 2015 the World's Best Festival.
2016
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Tomorrowland 2016 took place on 22, 23, and 24 July. The theme for the year was "The Elixir of Life" and saw 180,000 visitors. The 2016 edition of Tomorrowland saw a surprise set from Tiësto on the Thursday prior to the weekend and was sponsored by Budweiser.
Other performers included Axwell Λ Ingrosso, Martin Garrix, The Chainsmokers, and number one DJs Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike.
2017
2017 saw Tomorrowland expand to a two weekend event for the first time since their 9th anniversary in 2014. This year, a record number of tickets was sold - 400,000 spanning the two weekends. The festival saw a massive increase in the number of performers to span the 16 stages including regulars and a lot of artists making their festival debut. In 2017, the festival was nominated by the European Festivals Awards and the Electronic Music Awards for World's Best Festival. Towards the end of August Tomorrowland 2017 became the biggest social media music events in the world at the time reviving over 1.2 billion views from over 200 million people.
The 2018 edition of Tomorrowland saw an attendance of 400,000 people for the second year running across the two weekends. The festival took place on Friday 20 to Sunday 22 July and Friday 27 to Sunday 29 July with tickets for the two weekends selling out in an hour. Mainstage performers included Armin van Buuren, David Guetta, Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike, Hardwell, and Martin Garrix. The theme for the 2018 edition of the festival was "The Story of Planaxis". Tomorrowland 2018 also saw a lot of Avicii tributes to commemorate the death of the Swedish DJ.
Tributes to the DJ came from Axwell Λ Ingrosso, Don Diablo, Nicky Romero, and Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike. Digital Spy described the event as "the most elaborate festival on earth" with the only downside being the price.
2018
2019
For its fifteenth anniversary, Tomorrowland returned to The Book of Wisdom as its mainstage theme, previously used in 2012. The festival took place on the 19 to 21 and 26 to 28 July and saw regular performers like The Chainsmokers, Armin van Buuren and David Guetta return.
Supergroup Swedish House Mafia were rumoured to close the event following Steve Angello's claim in the autumn of the previous year that the group would play at the festival "by any means necessary". Rumours became even stronger when the group's signature "three dots" appeared on the Tomorrowland lineup. However the "three dots" were announced last minute to be 3 Are Legend leading many to believe that the group pulled out last minute however Axwell and Steve Angello claimed that the group were never booked for the festival.