Visorfest

There are festivals where you spend two days trying to work out where you’re supposed to be, which stage is running late and whether you can physically survive another trek across a field for a lukewarm beer. Then there’s VISOR FEST, where the whole point is rather simpler: turn up at La Marina Norte in València, find your people and let the songs do the travelling.

Across 25 and 26 September, more than 10,000 music fans descended on the waterfront for two days that managed to feel less like a conventional festival and more like a particularly well-organised musical time machine. Eight bands, one stage, no clashes and a crowd that clearly understood the assignment. The result was a weekend packed with reunions, discoveries, nostalgia, noise, emotion and some seriously good live performances.

Friday started under a merciless Valencian sun, with queues stretching towards the entrance and Hoodoo Gurus shirts everywhere you looked. The Australian garage-rock legends had the honour of opening proceedings, which might sound like a tough gig when people are still arriving, but Sydney's finest wasted absolutely no time reminding everyone why they've survived more than four decades in the business. Their mix of garage rock, power pop and gloriously infectious songwriting immediately got the festival moving, while also delivering one of VISOR FEST's most important ingredients: discovery. More than a few people walked away thinking, Why the fuck haven't I been listening to these guys for years?

New Model Army followed, and the relationship between this band and their Valencian audience is something rather special. Justin Sullivan and company delivered the kind of intense, emotionally charged performance that makes you understand why people follow this band from city to city. There was no sense of simply turning up and running through the greatest hits; this was a proper connection between band and audience, built over decades.

Then came The Damned, celebrating their 50th anniversary with all the elegance, menace and glorious eccentricity you'd expect from one of British punk's great survivors. Dave Vanian and Captain Sensible remain a formidable combination, and the band's appearance proved that fifty years after they helped kick open the doors for punk, their music hasn't been quietly placed in a museum. It still has teeth.

By the time Ocean Colour Scene appeared beneath the moon, VISOR FEST had shifted gear again. Simon Fowler and the band took the audience straight back to the 1990s, with Moseley Shoals turning into something considerably bigger than an album anniversary. Those songs have spent three decades lodging themselves into people's lives, and hearing them live — particularly on its 30th anniversary — produced one of Friday's most emotional moments.

Saturday was a different beast altogether. There was already a queue before the gates opened, with fans determined to get close to the stage for Martin Rossiterand Gene, and the appearance of Gene was one of those festival moments that doesn't need much explanation. At last year's VISOR FEST, fans had spontaneously turned up wearing Gene shirts and effectively issued a very polite musical demand: bring them back. One year later, somebody had clearly been listening.

The London band delivered an extraordinary set, and the reaction from the crowd was visceral. There were tears in the audience, tears among people working around the festival and a palpable sense that something people had genuinely wanted had just happened in front of them. Gene didn't simply return to València; they reminded everyone exactly why their songs still matter.

Before them, The Wannadies had delivered another long-awaited reunion, bringing their infectious Swedish power-pop brilliance back to Spain after years away. Hearing “You & Me Song” blasted across La Marina Norte was exactly the sort of moment VISOR FEST is built around: familiar, joyous and just slightly surreal when you realise how long you've been waiting to hear it live again.

Then RIDE walked onstage and proceeded to blow a sizeable hole in everyone's expectations. The band had already played VISOR FEST in 2018, but whatever memories people had carried from that appearance were about to be upgraded. The performance was huge, immersive and intensely played, with guitars washing across the venue and the crowd disappearing into the music. By the end, conversations were already happening among people who had seen RIDE multiple times in different cities and different eras, with the same conclusion coming up again and again: that was fucking special.

And then there was Manic Street Preachers .As festival closers go, this was heavyweight stuff. Arms went up. Voices went up. The audience sang from the first note to the last, while the giant screen delivered messages including “Libraries Gave Us Power”, a reminder that this has always been a band interested in ideas as much as amplification. And then came “You Love Us, Richey” — an emotional moment that underlined just how deeply the Manics' history is woven into their audience.

By the time the final notes disappeared over La Marina Norte, VISOR FEST had done what it set out to do. It had brought together eight bands from different generations and different corners of the rock spectrum, yet somehow made the whole weekend feel coherent. Hoodoo Gurus, New Model Army, The Damned, Ocean Colour Scene, The Wannadies, Gene, RIDE and Manic Street Preachers weren't simply names on a poster; they became chapters in one long weekend of rediscovery.

That is probably the secret of VISOR FEST. It isn't really about nostalgia, although there was plenty of that. It's about what happens when songs survive long enough to become part of people's lives and then, years later, thousands of people gather in the same place to scream them back at the people who wrote them.

There were reunions. There were discoveries. There were songs that hadn't been heard live in years. There were people travelling from across Spain and beyond, strangers becoming temporary friends over a shared love of a particular band, a particular album or a particular moment in musical history.

And there was València, looking rather spectacular while it hosted the whole bloody thing. VISOR FEST 2026 wasn't about trying to recreate the past. It was about proving that the past is still very much alive when you put the right bands, the right audience and the right setting together. Two days. Eight bands. More than 10,000 people. One stage. Absolutely no need for nostalgia when the music still hits this hard.

Now, where's that 2027 ticket?