Super Bock Super Rock cancels 2025 music festival after split with sponsor

One of Portugal’s most well-known pop-rock music festivals, Super Bock Super Rock which has run annually since 1995, has been cancelled this year for the first time since it began in what would have been its 30th anniversary.

The promoter Musica no Coração (The Sound of Music) legally parted ways with its naming sponsor Super Bock (one of Portugal’s two biggest beer and lager producers).

According to the business daily Negócios, the promoters have admitted that the event will not take place this year, ending weeks of speculation about the festival which is variously held at Lisbon’s Parque das Nações and Meco near Sessimbra.

Super Bock says that the event was cancelled because it is still looking for a new sponsor but has left the door open for 2026.

Luís Montez, the man behind the company Música no Coração that organises the festival did not comment about the cancellation of the event but did tell Echo Boomer that it was regrettable since the public and city would miss the popular winter music event.

But it is not the only festival to be cancelled. At the start of the year North Festival in Porto and Sudoeste at Zambujeira do Mar were also cancelled.

And the Música no Coração organised Sudoeste festival, whose dates for 2025 had been announced on August 10, 2024, has also been put on hold. Here the main sponsor, the Altice Portugal telecoms brand MEO, had pulled out.

Music festivals, of which there are around 350 per year in Portugal of one kind of another, have been big business over the years, particularly because of the amount of overseas visitors who come to Portugal and spend at least five days at these events.

In 2019 alone, music festivals in Portugal had an impact of €18Bn on the economy while last year that figure had risen to €20Bn.

Rock-in-Rio, one of the largest festivals held twice-yearly in Lisbon over three consecutive weekends in the summer, alone has an impact of around €120 million for the local economy while the return of NOS telecoms sponsored Alive organised by the promoter Everything is New rakes in around €30 million.

And when Taylor Swift performed in Lisbon last year with tickets selling for between €62-€538, hotel bookings in Lisbon were up 20%.

But despite the overall success of festivals in Portugal, rising production costs, the cost of living crisis on the whole, inflation, geo-political insecurity causing rising logistics and transport costs, the soaring costs of hotels and food have all taken their toll in recent years on festival organisers and goers, the latter who are typically young and don’t have a lot of cash to splash.

Some 16 major music festivals were cancelled in the US this year while in Australia only 56% of all festivals were profitable in 2022 and 2023. It is not known specifically why the sponsors MEO and Super Bock have pulled out in Portugal but falling financial returns compared to the colossal costs of staging these events must surely be a reason.