Record-breaking in many respects, Open’er Festival powered by Orange 2022 is behind us. At the same time, in terms of production and organization, it was the most difficult and demanding edition in the festival's twenty-year history. We are back! It was a time full of great emotions.
"It's been too long! Are you ready to let go tonight?”, said Dan Reynolds during the Wednesday Imagine Dragons concert at Orange Main Stage. “We needed this. I needed it - to be together, interact, feel, touch”, he continued. These words perfectly sum up the anticipation that accompanied tens of thousands of people three years after the last real festival season. At last, we could enjoy the concerts, meetings and freedom that are the basis of Open'er.
During 4 days, in this spirit, Gdynia-Kosakowo Airport welcomed over 150,000 participants and biggest artists - including the mentioned Imagine Dragons, as well as Twenty One Pilots, The Killers, A$AP Rocky, Martin Garrix, Måneskin, Playboi Carti, Years & Years, The Smile, Tove Lo and Peggy Gou, who in one day decided to replace the The Chemical Brothers, after their performance was cancelled due to Covid spreading through the band.
Open'er has also become a place to express the thoughts on the situation beyond our eastern border. During our special initiative "Let’s support Ukraine at concerts", in cooperation with the Polish Center for International Aid, we have conducted and continue to collect funds, i.a. for the reconstruction of schools in Ukraine, as well as the education and development of children and youth from Ukraine in Poland. Open'er made the first payment of PLN 50,000, Orange - the main sponsor of the festival - doubled this amount and subsequent payments began to flow in from the participants. Members of the Ukrainian band DakhaBrakha also spoke about the need of support, while Dan Reynolds symbolized it by grabbing the Ukrainian flag during the Imagine Dragons concert. “Before we went on stage, the US Ambassador to Poland (who was a guest at the meetings at the Let's Talk tent) told me how many refugees from Ukraine you had welcomed and we were really touched. Until today, we did not realize it. Keep doing it because it's beautiful. We can all take a lesson in proper behavior from Poland”, said Brandon Flowers at a special moment in The Killers performance, which reminded us all that the freedom we all felt that day is a value, which requires constant work - especially nowadays.
Like most festivals on our continent and in the USA, we came back in a time of organizational and logistical complications on an unprecedented scale. The daily cancellations of European flights or the ever-increasing cases of coronavirus infections among artists are just a small part of the reality that the world of international concert and festival tours is currently facing.
For the first time in history, the weather forced the evacuation of Open'er. In a short time, nearly 60,000 people were evacuated from the area, protecting the participants from the effects of the approaching storm. It was an unprecedented situation in the last 30 years in Poland, which opens a new chapter in discussions about the safety of mass events in our country. We have no doubts that the health and life of the participants at Open'er is and will always be an absolute priority.
Unfortunately, due to the weather conditions, some of the Friday concerts had to be canceled. In this situation, we all needed what Martin Garrix provided when he entered the stage at the end of the day - a nearly 2,5-hour set full of euphoria and colors that filled the open'er space until sunrise.
Popular as always were also the festival activities, such as Silent Disco, Alterkino, Fashion Stage, NGO and meetings in the Let's Talk tent, hosting i.a. the US Ambassador to Poland Mark Brzezinski, or the Mayor Of Warsaw Rafał Trzaskowski.
We thank the main sponsor - Orange and the sponsor - Heineken. We would also like to thank the partners: the city of Gdynia, the Kosakowo commune, their residents, authorities, security workers, as well as all local communes for their cooperation in this year's Open'er.
It was great to be back with you! Our thoughts are already focused on the 20th edition of Open'er, which will take place on June 28–1 July 2023.