Thank you for this year

Thank you for being such a fantastic audience!
This week we’ve experienced everything from hushed concert halls to standing ovations, wild cheers, and dancing both on and off the stage—hours on end, well into the late-night hours. No one throws a party quite like you!

Thanks also to everyone working at the concert venues and clubs for your wonderful efforts this week – and all year round. The festival may be over for now, but Oslo remains one of the best music cities in the world, with events happening every single day.

The 32nd edition of Oslo World has been a true success story, with packed venues all across the city, fantastic reviews, and countless moments we’ll remember for a long time. In fact, it was a record-breaking year for ticket sales – thank you for coming to the shows!

It all began with a visit from Egyptian artist Hakim, who opened the festival with a beautiful act of solidarity for Palestine before getting the entire crowd on their feet, dancing for an hour and a half. From there, the festival week unfolded as one celebration after another. We have to highlight the concert with Los Wembler’s at Goldie – they played a full hour and a half past their scheduled time, and at one point, the entire audience was up on stage. Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso filled Sentrum Scene to the brim with an ecstatic crowd, while Cuban Cimafunk made Toshov shake with joy during his dance-driven set at Cosmopolite.

There was also space for calm and reflection. Rarely have Oslo’s concert halls felt so serene as during Ganavya’s performance in Kulturkirken Jakob, or Ali Sethi & Nicolas Jaar at MUNCH. The closing concert with the legendary Gustavo Santaolalla, where many in the audience were moved to tears, will also stay with us for a long time.

It’s been wonderful to see how diaspora communities, new audiences, and longtime festival-goers have come together throughout the week – whether it was at concerts with Shabjdeed & Al Nather from Palestine, Senidah from Slovenia, or at a reggae service with The Congos from Jamaica.

As festival director Alexandra Archetti Stølen said in her closing speech:

“This year marks two hundred years since the first emigrant ship sailed from Norway to America. We often use the word globalization to describe our time. But people have been traveling and exchanging ideas for centuries. Music is full of examples – almost no genre is ‘pure.’ We have always needed one another.

I hope the music industry and cultural sector will remember this in the years to come.
It can be tempting to talk about supporting Norwegian music, Norwegian culture – perhaps as a way of defending these areas from major budget cuts. But that remains short-sighted.

The Norwegian music scene is at its best when it’s open. That’s not just a cliché – our audience shows that people truly want this. Presenting music from all over the world in Oslo becomes more fun and meaningful every year. Sometimes we tell ourselves stories of isolation – of closing ourselves off to new experiences, of devaluing culture.

Every Oslo World – all of you – tell a different story.
A story of joy, curiosity, and endurance on the dance floors and in the concert halls. That story is just as true. Thank you.”

We hope you’ll continue to keep the clubs and concert venues warm through the winter – until we meet again next year. Even this week, there are amazing things happening on stages around Oslo, including Todd Rundgren at Cosmopolite, and Dwarfs of East Agouza and Snakeskin at Kafé Hærverk – all artists we’d love to have at our own festival.
Oslo’s live music scene is only as good as you make it – so come out and join the concerts!