Rock Werchter '09

Belgium's biggest rock festival offering four days of varied international well known acts in a well organised commercial festival setting. Rock Werchter takes place in the small village of Werchter in Rotselaar, Belgium, and the dates for 2009 are confirmed as Thursday 2nd to Sunday 5th July.

The acts confirmed so far include Kings Of Leon, and Oasis as headliners, with Coldplay, The Killers, Placebo, Metallica, Nine Inch Nails, Kaiser Chiefs, Grace Jones, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Lily Allen, The Mars Volta, Flaming Lips, Pendulum, Röyksopp, Mogwai, Fleet Foxes, Limp Bizkit, The Prodigy, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Tiga, Jason Mraz, Katy Perry, 2manyDJs, Seasick Steve, Emiliana Torrini, Bloc Party, Franz Ferdinand, Dave Matthews Band, The Streets, Amy McDonald, Elbow, Henry Rollins spoken word, and more. For the line-up details, and day splits as available please click here
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The line-up is usually well worth the trek, and the campsites are clean if a little noisy (a good festival really then). Like nearby festival Pukkelpop standard local bus and train travel are free with your festival ticket. Food and drinks are bought using a ticket system. The camping areas are around a ten minute walk away from the festival site, but they have clean showers for two euros. For those who like to take in the sites Leaven has many beautful historic buildings and is home to the Stella Artois Brewery.

There are two stages and the area is pretty clean, as the organisers have an incentive to litter picking. 20 used cups gets you a small (the only size they do) cup of beer or water. There is no drinking water available from the taps so it is best to take some along.

Tickets are on sale with a 4 day pass priced at 169 euro (approx £156), with camp-site tickets costing an extra 17 euros (approx £16), regardless of the length of the stay. A day ticket is priced at 75 euro (approx £70). To buy tickets, click here.

A total of thirteen campsites are available at various points along the road to the arena entrance, which has been closed to vehicles. Most of the first ones are full by Thursday afternoon. The campsites will be open from Thursday 2nd July till Monday 6th July in the afternoon.

For detailed information about various aspects of the festival see the Rock Werchter Information (includes detailed info on camping, travel, children, food & drink, and more).

More information will be here when available.