Neopop Festival

The festival was born in 2006 in Viana do Castelo, a town of traditions an hour north of Porto, under a name that made its position clear: Antipop. "Precisely because it was a counterculture of music," says Raul Duro, who founded it with his friends Gustavo and Paulo. Resident Advisor links the name to the lack of underground electronic music in the Norte region, Clash to the dominance of commercial Europop in the early 2000s.

In 2009 the festival became Neopop: "the anti meant something more extreme that we wanted to step away from," Raul Duro explains. The tenth anniversary was celebrated in 2016. In 2018 Neopop ran over four days for the first time, opened by a free St Germain concert, with two stages, the Neo Stage framed by the harbour cranes and the Anti Stage set against the fort walls. After two years without a festival because of the pandemic, the 15th edition set its one-night record in 2022: close to 10,000 people on the Friday, with every day ticket sold.

The setting defines the place: a festival laid out between the fortress, the quays, the sheds and the shipyards, with lights and visuals by DubLab. Run by Made of You with the support of the municipality, it also spills into town, with Original Sessions at the Teatro Sá de Miranda and, in 2026, a free Richie Hawtin set on Praça da República. Raul Duro sums up its philosophy: new talent, established artists and legends of electronic music on the same bill.

In 2026, for its 20th anniversary, Neopop took back the Antipop name for a single edition: a bill in alphabetical order, the main stage moved to face the fort, a third stage named Back Stage as a jab at VIP culture, and an exhibition on two decades of the festival. The organisers reported about 32,000 festivalgoers from 6 to 8 August, and Laurent Garnier closed the edition on Sunday morning. The festival returns from 5 to 7 August 2027.