thoughts about AFHF 2025
I wasn't here for the past Away From Home festivals, so -mainly for myself- I wanted to do some research on the official AFHF social media channels and their communication, as well as look at a lot of Tumblr posts from 2021 to 2025. So I did. :D
And if you are, like I was, not up to snuff about the past editions, please do yourself a favour and go through the well curated tags by Elsa @dreamings-free: AFHF 2024 • AFHF 2023 • AFHF 2022 • AFHF 2021
All of the info is given judgement free and fact-based only!
First, the location. A festival that isn't static, but instead travels between countries and continents is much more difficult to pull off than a static one. Hands down. It's something you have to be very committed to.
Not only will you have to choose the continent and country at least 1 year ahead of time and often purely based on past similar events, your experience, number-based estimates, demand, budget, infrastructure of the area, etc etc., but the closer it gets to the festival date, the bigger the risk of something big going wrong becomes. In this year's edition, I think we all know what I mean here and people had and have all extremely valid concerns. (I will leave out my personal opinion on all of this, because I've already spoken about it in several posts' tags, plus others have already spoken on it in a more concise way than I ever could. I am directly affected, though, as I am not even able to enter the US under its current regime.) As soon as big issues arise, as a festival organiser, you have to weigh your options and decide whether you'll be postponing or still pulling through. There are numerous reasons for doing either. Factors the GP doesn't have any insight in or might not even think of. It also depends on the timing of it all. Many decisions surrounding an annual, traveling festival are made much earlier than the GP thinks, because the actual announcements about it are made much, much later on. For example, the 2025 edition hasn't even started, yet and the decision where (roughly) they'd/Louis like the 2026 edition to take place has likely already been made.
Second, the ticket sales. We are currently 1 day out and the official AFHF Twitter account has included the ticket link in today's post. With the past editions, the official AFHF social media channels stated that there were "tickets still available" 4 days before the festival in 2023; in 2024 it was last mentioned 9 days before the festival. After that, on all the festival's social media in 2021, 2023, and 2024, there were no more posts about the festival tickets. But also: there was also not a single official post about the festival being sold out, in those years. Except for 2022. That year, they posted that info -- pre-festival. (meta: for the AFHF 2022 Spain edition, Tix went on sale on 10 June 2022 and as you can see here, the waiting queue to order a ticket was at one point stuffed with almost 38,000 people that day. The festival was officially announced as sold out 3 days later, on 13 June 2022 - this was weeks before the festival took place)
Still, on the official AFHF website it states that all 4 previous festivals had been sold out: "Following the success of four previous sold-out editions in London, UK (2021), Malaga, Spain (2022), Camaiore, Italy (2023), and Mérida, Mexico (2024), [...]" and also, I reckon you have all seen the pictures of the enormous crowds at the past festivals.
From my professional experience, if a festival is sold out, that's something you will absolutely want to announce through all available channels pre-festival; even during the festival or directly afterwards -- as that is not just great for a festival's image, but also important info for potential spontaneous ticket buyers.
This didn't happen with any of the editions, though, except 2022. And yet, Louis and his entire team considered every single edition of the festival a huge success. 💖
Most importantly: we don't have insight into the ticket sale numbers of AFHF. Nobody except for the ticketing service, the event promoters, the venue event management, the festival director, Louis and his management team, and maaaybe the management of the performing artists and maaaybe the marketing team get the regular reports including the raw numbers. Exact ticket sale numbers are shared on a need-to-know basis.
To give further context, for AFHF 2023, a 1D fan Twitter account posted the venue sizes and I'll add on to them:
AFHF in Mexico (2024): 10,000 to 30,000 AFHF in the USA (2025): 7,500
So, you see this year's AFHF will even be the smallest venue out of all of them. But also for the first time, it's a 2-day festival. So, essentially the fair comparison would be to put the entire festival capacity at 10,000+. Usually day tickets are more sought after than entire weekend-ones, not just because of the price, but also because naturally Louis will only play his set on 1 day and appear (as announced today, 3 Oct 2025) with Steve Aoki during Just Hold On on the other day. So, one day will likely sell better than the other.
So, to conclude this, -and it might get a little opinionated after all now- we cannot realistically know or deduct beforehand "how well" the festival is actually doing. Plus, many people have many different perceptions of when a festival is good or meh or bad or something else in between; or when it's a success or not. There's different types of successes anyway, not just financial. Louis and his team might focus more on the factor of safety than financial profitability this year. But we can only guess. The festival is a project that's very close to Louis' heart and even though the circumstances are extra difficult (and also sadly dangerous to entire groups of people 🫂), I believe the entire team will be doing the best they can and using what they are able to work with to shape it into a lovely experience for each person behind and in front of the stage.
And I wish everyone who attends and works there a wonderful, uniting, and safe time 💖
