You know the old saying “you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone?” Of course you do, that’s been the last two years of our lives. For me, that feeling came the most over COVID from two things – ski trips and music festivals.
Well, here we are. It’s the end of winter 2022. Restrictions have mostly lifted, and we’ve been itching to get back on the slopes one last time before summer fully enters the equation. With the sun starting to rise earlier and set later, it could mean only one thing. Yes, it’s music festival – ski trip crossover season!
If you’ve never heard of Tomorrowland, then you’re probably not that into music festivals. But if you have and you’re into electronic dance music, you’ve most likely dreamt of going and had it as the shining star at the top of your bucket list. These days, they have a winter version (aptly named Tomorrowland Winter) and, spoiler alert, it’s epic.
When the legends at @ellesse and @fit_mg_uk offered us the chance to go to France to see what all the hype was about, we quickly took them up on the offer.
“There’s something so much more special about a music festival on the mountain”
The Festival
Winter music festivals certainly aren’t a new thing and you’ve all probably had one too many pints at Apres Ski, so if you’ve never been to one before then you’re most likely halfway there. Now imagine Apres Ski, but there are about 18,000 people there and some of the biggest DJs in the world are playing for you on the mountain. Sounds alright, doesn’t it?
This year, Tomorrowland Winter ran from the 19th-26th of March, but the main festivities spanned four nights from Tuesday to Friday.
What has always set Tomorrowland apart is the out-of-this-world production they put into it, and the winter edition is certainly no exception. The stage setup is absolutely insane, albeit not as insane as the one you see at the summer version of Tomorrowland. Performers swing from the roof, flamethrowers galore… I just can’t even explain it – watch the videos below to see for yourself.
This year wasn’t Tomorrowland Winter’s first rodeo. They held one back in 2019 before you-know-what came along, but this year they came back in style. The 2022 edition was a little scaled back from the first one, but the sold-out event still drew 18,000 punters from all across the globe.
Unlike its older brother which has a bit more diversity in the music they play, the Tomorrowland Winter lineup this year was almost exclusively EDM artists (you know, the fist-pumpy one where you might end up with cake being thrown at you by Steve Aoki? Yeah, that kind).
Considering the festival ran at the same time as one of the biggest EDM festivals on earth, Ultra Music Festival Miami, the line-up featured some of the biggest names in dance music royalty including Armin Van Buuren, Afrojack, Dimitry Vegas & Like Mike, Martin Solveig and Steve Aoki. Now we know it’s an EDM festival after all but, if we’re being super-critical, it would have been good to see a bit more genre diversity delving into the house and techno genres like Tomorrowland does in Belgium.
The festival runs from around lunchtime until 2am each day, so it’s a pretty hard slog if you tire easily. All the daytime stuff all happens on the mountain, and the nighttime stuff back down in town at the bottom of the slopes. There’s plenty of time to hit the slopes during the day – that is, of course, you’re not rolling out of bed at midday every day with a cracking hangover.
