Øya continues to raise the bar of the perfect festival experience

At Øya, there’s none of the edge that can feature at other festivals, everyone is super polite, to the point of nodding appreciatively during sets rather than forming a mosh-pit - which would be a very un-Øya thing to do - although it does break with that convention when the mood requires it. Rather than having to play catch up with sustainability, representativeness and inclusivity, the festival has led from the front since its inception, a prime example is each of Øya’s four stages not only have ramps, but chargers for electric wheelchairs installed.

I speak to Claes Olsen, one of the co-founders, the week before the 2026 edition and he says, “It's an exciting year, but every year it’s like we’re starting over again. We're up in the north of Europe and we feel we need to do a little bit better to get artists to come up here.” The artists keep coming, and there are a lot of them to see over Øya’s four day run. 

From the very beginning, Øya’s manifesto is that 50 percent of the artists would be homegrown and they’d get a decent slot on the bill. “We mix it up and have Norwegian acts playing later, being very specific where we put them in the line-up to give them more focus and attention.” Olsen explains. “We’re really down on the details; we spend more time on the smaller acts than on the headliners.”

He cites the rise of Girl in Red, whereby festivals have a responsibility to champion their own talent. “She played her first ever show at Øya and last year she headlined. There's so many of those stories. It's a small country, a small city and it's important to support that in many ways.”

The site at Tøyen Park is intimate, built around four stages, all within a few minutes walking distance. The Amfiet, (The Amphitheatre) is located at the bottom of a hill so that everyone can see the stage, The Circus is a tent with the best acoustics, The Vindfruen (The Wind stage) is shaded by trees and at Hagen til Stø (The Garden) there are wooden benches to sit down on, you’re thinking “how civilised…” and it is. 

Øya takes its approach to the climate incredibly seriously, and their sustainability initiatives started in 2003. “We always try to be in forefront of that, not just to make the site clean. The amount we recycle is extremely high, it's a lot of work, but it’s worth it” Olsen says. I go on a sustainability tour onsite, and the detritus of the weekend is hand-sorted into 24 types of waste materials, such is the meticulousness for doing the right thing. 

For local artists, Øya has an indelible impact on the city. I speak to the songwriter Ea Othilde, who made her Øya debut at the age of 17 in 2022 and has played the festival every year since. She describes the festival as a gateway for Norwegians to see the biggest acts from around the world, “Øya is where I've gotten to see some of my favorite artists, like PJ Harvey, Nick Cave and Moderat.” But for Othilde, it’s not just in a musical sense that Øya makes a difference, the festival is part of the city’s culture. “Øya is a social hub during the summer” she says. 

“A lot of young people work as volunteers to get free tickets. It's always a topic throughout the summer - who's working where, with who, and which concerts will you sneak out from work to see?” I speak to one of the bar staff who tells me she worked the entire weekend to see Blood Orange. There are 2,500 volunteers here this year, including a partnership with Natur Og Ungdom, an initiative to give the young people of Oslo work experience.

As well as the draw of the international acts, Øya is an opportunity for local artists to create their own stories. As Othilde explains, “Something special about playing this festival is my friends and family will be there. In addition to being a great festival to play at, I feel like I'm playing for people who I want to see me play live - it makes this performance very personal.”

Last year the festival hit some political turbulence through its links with the investment firm KKR, and their business interests in Israel. Øya was bought by Superstruct Entertainment in 2018, who were then acquired by KKR in 2024. Øya haven’t avoided the issue, and last year Kneecap, Fontaines D.C. and others were outspoken about Palestine during their performances, as others are this year.

Olsen doesn’t duck the question when I ask him about it. “We ended up in a little bit of turmoil last year, and we decided to trust our own values. We are strong about our values, and we were very outspoken about them.” Øya recently issued a statement on where they stand and the Palestine Committee of Norway (Palestinakomiteen) announced that in line with Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) guidelines, it no longer prioritised a boycott of Øya, but it was unequivocal about its feelings on KKR. 

Olsen explains that “Our goal is to always be in the forefront when it comes to sustainability issues, but we also want to be on the forefront when it comes to human rights.” The issue is still topical however, walking into Tøyen Park there are banners stating “Ban Øya”, but open discourse is critical to the festival organisers and in the spirit of free speech they’re not removed. 

When I get to Tøyen Park on the Wednesday, the first band I see are Norway’s Fuzzy Organ Quartet at Hagen til Stø, who do exactly what their name says on the tin, a four-piece with a ferocious singer in Synne Hellebø, who prances like a Stooges-era Iggy Pop. It verges on the surreal when three dancers dressed in black gimp suits and white head-masks arrive, but it sets the tone for Øya - fun, communal and not adhering to convention. 

At The Circus, South Korean three-piece Sailor Honeymoon pack out the tent. With their incredibly tight punk, narrated with insouciantly world-weary vocals by drummer Abi Raymaker, the story threads of Øya start to come together, a blend of musical cultures coalescing with a Norwegian heart at its core. They end their set with entrepreneurial flair, telling the audience they’ll be front of the stage to sell merch for 100 NOK. 

A solar eclipse is due to take place before The Cure play, but it’s overcast, perhaps Sól, the female deity in Norse mythology who drove a chariot that carried the sun across the sky decided to keep it suitably dramatic. 

Walking up to the Amfiet stage, as Robert Smith’s voice flows down the hillside, I wonder if they’re coming on to one of their early recordings, so youthful does his singing sound, but no, that’s still Smith’s voice, which has lost none of its panache of over a near 50-year career. 

Smith’s remarkable voice leads The Cure through an equally remarkable 2-and-a-half-hour set of hits and deep cuts. Their encore, at a whopping 45 minutes, is longer than most of the weekend’s sets, and in terms of live performance, Robert Smith is the Bruce Springsteen for the indie generation. As the band leave the stage Smith remains alone, visibly moved, smiling at the audience and promises to return to Øya soon. With the intent appreciation of the crowd, you can see why he wants to come back so often. 

Thursday starts at gentle pace, with a tour of music venues in Oslo, where it’s apparent that music is hidden in plain sight all over the city. Starting in The Jakob Culture Church, which has been converted into a music venue with a bar, we’re treated to a lovely, stripped-down acoustic set from Beharie, who plays a rapturously received set at Vindfruen on the Sunday. 

Then it’s to the Parkteatret, which in the spirt of music being sequestered across Oslo has a set in the bar from Sofi O and at the back there’s a cinema that has been converted into a 500-capacity venue with the sloping cinema floor still intact, where like the Amfiet, everyone can see the stage.

At Tøyen, Selma French opens at Vindfruen with a Palestine flag to her side and her voice soars all over the park. French’s music is delightfully intricate and intimate, campfire songs reminiscent of Nick Drake that are sung in English, but like many Norwegian artists at the festival, her between song chat is in her native tongue. Listening to her songs, you can see the wisdom in Øya’s strategy of picking local artists who should slot in higher up the bill in the coming years, and French is certainly one of them. 

Rigla play a blissfully bucolic set with their songs incorporating traditional Norwegian folk standards at Hagen til Stø, where I finally get to sit on one of the reclining chairs and let their multitude of instruments and singing wash over me. Halfway through I walk closer to the stage and it’s there that the intricacy of the music hit me, as the threads of their individual parts, instruments and voices interweave wonderfully.

Ea Othilde’s set on the same stage also feels like an artist’s breakout moment. The You'll Leave the City EP in June was the sound of an artist reaching a higher gear, and as Othilde starts alone with an acoustic guitar, the audience walk to the front of the stage as she’s joined by her band for “City of Love”. Othilde’s voice has that confidence of artist when they know they’re nailing their story. There are nods to shoegaze, rock, indie and folk, but it’s delivered in a way that’s all her own. During the last song there’s a lovely moment where an 8-year-old suddenly starts dancing and Othilde takes a picture of the crowd as she departs, if the same picture is taken next year, the crowd in the background will be much bigger. 

Melody Prochet’s Melody’s Echo Chamber, one of the most underrated artists of the last decade, play an incredibly immersive set at The Circus. Prochet’s sense of joy at playing Øya, as with most of the artists, is palpable and infectious. “Some Time Alone, Alone” from her debut is still a banger, and on the closing “Shirim” she leaves the stage to let the band flow into an outro, to show that the music is ultimately the star as much as the artist.   

The crowd for Geese at Vindfruen is enormous but they split the jury. Cameron Winter has been hailed as a generational talent, but the set lacks a killer song, and the performance is missing a va-va-voom. Perhaps it was an off night, but there are artists more deserving of the audience’s attention at Øya. A perfect case in point is when Nick Cave arrives at Amfiet an hour later with his ageless Bad Seeds, driven by Warren Ellis, the groove underpinned by Radiohead’s Colin Greenwood and the joy of his dulcet backing singers.  

Cave quips that “80% of my songs are about rain”, and for the first time trickles come down from the skies. Tonight, Cave is equal parts showman, shaman, raconteur and preacher. It’s a life-affirming performance that brings the audience, myself included, to cry tears of joy and catharsis, on “Joy” from his latest record Wild God, he sings "We've all had too much sorrow, now is the time for joy”. His set moves inexorably towards the tear-fest that is the closing "Into My Arms", and when it comes, it feels like a reassuring arm around the shoulder. All is love in Tøyen Park. 

Friday gets its sunhat on, and the day starts with the hotly tipped Westside Cowboy, who bring an energy to Hagen til Stø that Geese lacked the previous evening. Their influences aren’t hard to miss, and their songs are deliberately unpolished, but when they close, standing around one microphone with the drummer hitting a snare, and one guitar to support the harmonies, the intimacy of Øya shines through. 

The diversity of Øya line-up is a key strength, and next up at Hagen til Stø Greek artist Σtella plays a set of beautifully polished, understated pop music, which is delivered so well that the usually genteel Øya audience are moved to start clapping along to the final song. Bergen band Slomosa deliver something completely different at The Circus, a set of no-nonsense riffs, which sees the first and last of crowd-surfing at Øya. There’s a joy in watching the unbridled abandon from the crowd, a different type of intimacy than what’s come before and the flame throwers at the sets’ close are quite something. 

Sombr, AKA Shane Boose, headlines Amfiet and leaves a lot of the audience cold. Sombr comes on to a video of himself backstage, sat on a Cadillac and the ambition is admirable, but he feels tryhard for star power rather than simply exuding it. I take my leave to go and see Tomora but speaking to a Sombr super-fan the next morning, even they were bemused that he finished his set playing “12 to 12” three times in a row. 

Tomora have a completely different approach to a headline set, and the pairing of The Chemical Brothers’ Tom Rowlands and AURORA is a performance of total abandon. Arriving at the Circus tent, it feels more like a club more than a festival. I’m initially convinced they’re using AI to create two versions of AURORA, as two white-clad figures move on opposite sides of the stage in perfect syncopation, but it turns out it’s AURORA’s live bandmate Amalie Holt Kleive. Seeing them move together is initially unsettling, like seeing the dead twins appear in the hallway in The Shining, but as they shadowbox the immersion kicks in. When AURORA and Kleive join Rowland behind the decks at the close it’s like watching three children in a playground having the best time. It’s a joyful end to the day. 

As Øya is a city festival, if you don’t spend the morning soaking up Oslo’s culture, you’re missing the frame of the picture. Saturday begins with a trip to a floating dockside sauna beside the Akerselva river, where the idea is to start in the ice bath, jump into the river and then sit in the sauna. I skip the very cold ice bath, but the experience is an incredible way to start the day, as people of Oslo walk past on the high street and the blend of nature and urbanity blur into each other. And again, music is everywhere Oslo, as I swim in the river, there’s a jazz band playing across bay as part of the Oslo Jazz Festival.  

Arriving at Tøyen, Marit Larsen, Norwegian musical royalty who broke through with M2M before becoming a solo artist, eases us into the day under the sweltering sun at Amfiet with a set accompanied by her band and a string section that’s supremely accomplished. Her childhood friend Marion Raven, with whom she formed M2M, joins to duet on their debut single “Don’t Say You Love Me” and it’s a lovely moment for two legends of Norway’s musical story. 

And then for something completely different. At Hagen til Stø, Norwegian six-piece Tre40fire certainly have fun. With each of them dressed in red and white, it’s a curious mix of boy band, hip-hop and K-Pop styling, as they take turns to sit down, stand up, and run around the stage with a controlled chaos. They need more polish, but their frenetic delivery would be a great fit for an evening slot rather than in the afternoon sun.     

Girl Group, a 5-piece of UK and Norwegian artists, play a powerfully charged set at Vindfruen. Singer Lily Christlow addresses the crowd with “We urge Øya to end their partnership with Pepsi, KKR and Superstruct. Free Palestine” and speaks about the importance of festivals being safe spaces, which Øya certainly is. Girl Group challenge norms, they only work with women and binary artists, which is a vital approach to inclusivity. Despite their call to action for Øya, it also holds a light up to the values both the festival and artists share, where freedom of speech is to be cherished and embraced. 

Lily Allen’s performance of West End Girl at Amfiet sees the festivals’ storytelling reach its peak. Whilst some have bemoaned the lack of greatest hits in the set, the re-living of the breakdown of her marriage to David Harbour is equal parts hilarious, heartbreaking and cathartic. When she asks the question, “Who the fuck is Madeline?”, the crowd ask it along with her - the key take out from the story is, do not fuck with Lily Allen. As she lies on a bed, holding up a dildo on “Pussy Palace” it’s as much a theatrical performance as it is a musical one. When Allen returns to the stage after the bittersweet closer “Fruityloop” she receives a bunch of flowers, throws them into the crowd and the sense of theatre is complete.   

The last band I see is Hayeminol at Hagen til Stø, which has been the home to the breakout local artists this year and the politeness of the crowd transforms into an embracing of the noise. When Hayeminol start playing the audience stand up and muster their last bit of energy, as the mix of heady guitars, keyboards and dulcet harmonies are delivered with infectious ferocity. Like Ea Othilde and Rigla, Hayeminol play like a band about to make their breakthrough. And the festival ends where it starts, with a homegrown band taking risks and pulling them off. 

If you’ve not experienced the delights of Øya, imagine a smaller Hyde Park with a killer line up of international and local artists, where there’s no litter on the floor, a meat free menu, true diversity in the line-up and people of all generations soaking up the music. As a festival, Øya is trying to do the right thing, to be a home for everyone, addressing wrongs as best it can, and continually refining what the perfect festival experience should be. 

Tusen Takk, Øya.