The Largest Music Festivals in the World

While live show announcements and touring operations are slowly picking up across the globe, the question which festival will take the crown for the most attendees in 2022 will likely remain unanswered for the time being. When it comes to attendance figures for 2019, the race for the top spot has been surprisingly close.

According to organizer reports, Morocco's Mawazine came in first the second time in a row with an attendance of roughly 2.8 million. The festival taking place in Rabat was established in 2001 and in 2019 hosted international and local music acts like The Black Eyed Peas, Migos or famous Lebanese singer Elissa. Taking second place with an attendance of about 2.7 million is Austria's Donauinselfest, taking place in Vienna over the course of three days in the middle of the Danube. The third spot is taken up by the Montreal International Jazz Festival. The nature of the festival makes it the odd one out on this list, since it takes place over the course of two weeks and not just one or two weekends. Nonetheless, its approximately two million visitors in 2019 granted it a sizable margin to the roughly 750,000 festival fans visiting Polish Pol'and'Rock festival in 2019.

Overall, the music industry sector generated $23.1 billion in revenue in 2019 with recorded music according to IFPI data. Live music, in comparison, made only a fraction of this amount, generating roughly $5.5 billion the year before the pandemic started.