Few festivals have managed to draw as much attention as Primavera Sound did when they revealed the line-up for their 2025 edition. The announcement of the trifecta of women that drove pop’s zeitgeist last year with their most recent albums – Charli xcx’s BRAT, Sabrina Carpenter’s Short N’ Sweet, and Chappell Roan’s The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess – as the main headliners made the tickets sell out in early January, just a week after the line-up was disclosed, something that has rarely taken place in the festival’s history: the last instance of something similar was in 2022, when ticket sales were propelled by post-pandemic craze.

Located by the Mediterranean Sea, at Barcelona’s industrial, concrete-heavy Parc del Fòrum, Primavera Sound 2025 got underway last Thursday, and managed to live to its hype thanks to an excellent programming that included a combination of big industry names, music bellwethers, critically acclaimed acts and world-class DJs. The festival felt straightforward, effective, as, ever since Primavera retook their original one-weekend formula in 2024 after two years of experimentation that failed to meet expectations—the two-weekend proposal of 2022 and the sister event in Madrid in 2023 both received widespread complaints over their organisation.

This year's edition was marked by honeyed Mediterranean weather, with early-evening sun-bathing and golden hours preceding crisp, breezy nights, in contrast to last year, when festivalgoers had to endure heavy rains and even electric storms. The festival was also marked by a predominantly international audience, which mirrored the line-up’s global scope (it was hard to hear Spanish or Catalan being spoken among the crowd at any of the headliners), and by a prominent LGBTQ+ feel. Primavera aims at making the festival a safe space for queer people, with two “Nobody is normal” tents available for anyone wanting to denounce any kind of gender and sexuality-based discrimination.

As for the music, the three main headliners’ shows relied heavily in their last albums: the logical consequence of those three records’ larger-than-life cultural impact. The Powerpuff Girls—as Sabrina, Charli and Chappell are known online, a comparison that even led the festival’s organisation to locate a big Powerpuff Girls figure near the grounds' entrance – took to the Estrella Damm and Revolut stages—the festival’s biggest—and drew astronomical crowds. All of their shows displayed the high-gloss theatrics, over-the-top stagecraft and striking visuals characteristic of pop to varying degrees of effectiveness.

Chappell Roan at Primavera Sound 2025. Photo Credit: Clara Orozco.

Paradoxically, Roan, an artist so well-known for her queerness and maximalism that she always wears a full face of drag queen-like make-up, gave the least complicated, most upfront concert out of the three of them. Her set, while not devoid of grandeur—it featured a castle in a fantasy dreamland, and she appeared onstage like a World of Warcraft sorcerer princess, donning a mask with butterfly wings and antennae, a blue cape laden with fabric strips and a sceptre—, was the one that featured her most closely. She did not undertake any complicated choreographies, and limited to singing her heart out while throwing in some melodramatic arm gestures. If the show’s paraphernalia sometimes felt lacking—at one point Roan sang the ‘Picture You’’s ‘50s-jukebox-ballad melodies to a wig atop a mic stand, which, probably as she intended, was camp and gauche in equal measures—, it was refreshing to hear the Missouri-born artist let out her unaltered, larger-than-life belts throughout the whole set.

Sabrina Carpenter at Primavera Sound 2025. Photo Credit: Sharon Lopez.

This stood in stark contrast to Carpenter’s show, for which a backing vocal track, set at the same volume as her actual voice, only went away during the set's few downtempo moments, and was the most annoying because of how little her velvet-like, twangy voice needed it. Visually, the Pennsylvania-native singer’s show was a perfectly polished incursion into product-placement-as-Americana with a ‘50s aesthetic. The heart shape and pink light-filled stage featured a plethora of dancers dressed in colourful ‘50s clothing, and many of the songs were preceded by quaint video intros, like a dancing contest for ‘Nonsense’, or a “manchild spray” ad for the forcible, country-synth pop of ‘Manchild’, Carpenter’s first single this year, which she debuted live for the first time at the festival.

Even if it was filled with bangers, dynamism and a thoroughly engaged audience, Carpenter’s one hour and fifteen minutes-long set could not help feeling short, coming just one day after Charli xcx and Troye Sivan performed for almost two hours, bringing their frantic, co-joint SWEAT tour to Barcelona for an exclusive non-American date. Sivan opened with a slight nervousness that went away a few songs in: “I think this is the biggest ever show we’ve played,” he admitted. It was the Aussie’s second year in a row playing the festival, piggybacking on his star-making 2023 album Something to Give Each Other, and his stable vocals and his sexual, thorough choreography hit the mark, most notably in the lap dance for ‘One of Your Girls’. As to her counterpart, Charli appeared onstage hanging from a scaringly high scaffolding. Her show bits consisted mainly in catwalking, ass-shaking, and singing in stratospheric autotune levels while the audience screamed every word of the songs from her epochal BRAT. Two of the show’s biggest highlights were her dramatic ‘Track 10’ rendition, which saw her drop to the ground at some points as cameras circled her, Chappell Roan’s surprise appearance to perform the ‘Apple’ dance, which quickly went viral online, and the remix of ‘Talk Talk’, which closed the set and saw the two stars tease each other in a moment filled with a complicity that was impossible to fake.

Charli xcx and Troye Sivan at Primavera Sound 2025. Photo Credit:

If there were two artists who cemented their star status while asserting that their ascent is far from over, it was the festival’s biggest Irish names: CMAT and Fontaines D.C.. Taking on Thursday to the Cupra stage, perhaps the most endearing of all Primavera’s fourteen stages, built in an amphitheatre that allowed you to actually see the performer and made for an incredible atmosphere, CMAT flaunted inimitable charisma, hilarious theatrics that included flashing her underwear and bouncing her breasts from the get-go, and delivered what was arguably the festival’s best vocal performance. Her connection with the crowd was repeatedly asserted, in the laughs she elicited (“Let’s give it up for the sluts,” she shouted before ‘Whatever’s Inconvenient’), in the way the ‘Dunboyne Co. Meath’ two-step she asked the audience to perform during ‘I Wanna Be a Cowboy, Baby!’ lasted for the entirety of the song while a fan danced beside her onstage, or in how she finished the concert entering the crowd to hug fans after a spectacular rendition of ‘Say For Something’, concluding a show that she said would live in her mind for the remainder of her life.

CMAT at Primavera Sound 2025. Photo Credit: Sergio Albert.

Fontaines D.C. came to the Revolut stage on Saturday to deliver one of the festival’s most high-octane and punk moments. The audience was instantly frantic, turned into an endlessly resurfacing mosh pit that had audience members crowd-surfing and cups constantly flying over people’s heads. Beginning with the ponderous guitar picking of ‘Romance’, the exquisitely curated setlist kept the energy high thanks to bangers like ‘Bug’ and ‘Roman Holiday’, until the end of the set, when the guitar strums of ‘In the Modern World’’s made for an extended, solemn intro that had everyone singing the lyrics as if they were those of a hymn, before the show closed in an explosive climax with ‘I Love You’ and ‘Starbuster’.

At the end of ‘I Love You’ the band displayed a Palestine flag and the message: “Israel is committing genocide. Use your voice.” This was one of many references to the conflict in the Gaza Strip that were present in the festival. For instance, by the entrance, near the Powerpuff Girls figure, there was a tunnel-like installation where everyone who wished to enter could hear the sounds of bombs being dropped on the strip. CMAT also called for a free Palestine during her concert, and Palestine flags were not uncommon among festivalgoers, especially Irish ones, who often combined symbols from the two nations in their attires.

HAIM at Primavera Sound 2025. Photo Credit: Gisela Jané.

Another stellar act was sister trio HAIM, who came to Parc del Fòrum to parade their own brand of effortlessly cool California sound. Kicking off the tour for I quit, their fourth album, to be released in two weeks’ time, the sisters played swift pop-rock beneath a long, horizontal LED screen that displayed “I quit” messages (like the hilarious “I quit winter” for the Lou Reed-inspired ‘Summer Girl’) and which narrated dismal dating stories during the summery ‘Relationships’, the lead single from their upcoming record. Uniting past and contemporary influences, as reflected in how they alternated their singing with electric guitar solos à la old-school rocker, the skilled delivery of HAIM’s feathery songwriting was further embellished by the haunting sunset that took place during their show. However, as thoroughly engaging as their set was, you could not help but miss in the setlist some of the standout tracks in their repertoire, like the timeless ‘Forever’, which introduced them to fans and put them on the map for fans and critics alike.

Among the artists who delivered mixed results was FKA Twigs. Despite offering up some beautiful moments, like a heart-wrenching rendition of ‘cellophane’, the English singer-songwriter’s grandiose three-act set, heavy on instrumental breakdowns and impressionistic dancing, came off more as a visual arts performance than a concert, and felt disconnected from the audience, with the infectious chorus of ‘oh my love’ being one of the few real sing-along moments. Wolf Alice’s set brandished singer Ellie Roswell’s powerhouse voice, and featured highlights like ‘The Last Man on Earth’, in which Roswell’s soft, almost spoken vocals were reminiscent of Mazzy Star, or the enveloping ‘Delicious Things’, but felt a bit lacklustre at some points.

Beabadoobee’s eclectic show, which blended different types of rock under lo-fi textures, sounded best when it delved into a sort of ‘00s garage/emo rock, while Beach House, who remained dark, smoke-enveloped silhouettes for the entirety of their set in an effort to conjure the trance-like quality of their music, delivered a soothing dream pop set that would have probably benefitted from having been played indoors.

Confidence Man at Primavera Sound 2025. Photo Credit: Clara Orozco.

Other remarkable acts included Australian band Confidence Man, who delivered an electropop set at the Amazon Music stage with hues of house, EDM and disco, and whose frenetic choreography and outlandish outfit changes—one of which included a LED-screen cone bra and LED wings for singers Janet Planet and Sugar Bones, respectively—made you unable to take your eyes off them for a second.

Wet Leg’s uptempo indie-rock set, which noticeably was missing band co-founder Hester Chambers, had one f its most remarkable moments during ‘Ur Mom’, when lead vocalist Rhian Teasdale asked the audience to deliver “the longest scream ever, and during the hastened rendition of ‘Too Late Now’, whose lyrics Teasdale screamed in rapid fire. Turnstile brought hardcore punk to one the festival’s late nights – beginning with the ambient ‘Never Enough’, which saw lots of people running to the stage as they screamed the lyrics, the Maryland-formed five-piece’s featured rhythmic, distorted electric guitars mashes and screams that melted into prolonged, dissonant chords.

Primavera’s big absentee was Clairo. The bedroom pop artist announced the cancellation of her concert in early May, citing “logistical issues,” which marked her second time pulling out of the festival, having done so in 2022 after one of her band’s members contracted COVID.

Primavera Sound offered its attendees a sensational musical experience. Comprising everything from headliners’ massive crowds to intimate concerts and splendid late-night DJ sets, the festival leaves no doubt about how it has established itself as one of Europe’s biggest and finest.

Written by Jaime Guillot, with additional contributions by Carla Jarque Pontiveiro.