Marktrock Festival

Month : August
Place : Leuven, Belgium
Famous For : Music Festival
Attractions : Alternative Rock, Pop, Dutch Music

Marktrock is a popular crowd-puller music festival held each year around the August 15, in the heart of the university town of Leuven, Belgium. There is also a smaller Marktrock festival in Poperinge which is held the last Saturday of August. The name Marktrock comes from the Dutch word, markt, meaning market and it's held on 2 squares (4 until 24th edition) in the historical city center of Leuven. Until the 24th edition (2006) the three day festival always had August 15, Assumption day as last day.

Major Attractions

In 2004, the 22nd edition of the Marktrock festival was held in Leuven and it has grown into one of Europe's biggest urban music festivals with over 350,000 visitors each year. On February 5, 2007 the Marktrock vzw organization announced the end of the festival. Main reasons were the raising price of quality artists and groups, the low capacity of the main stage on the "Oude Markt", the new and expensive legal regulations each year, the financial risk of open-air festivals and the organization refused to raise entry tickets for the "Oude Markt" stage again. The rain during the 2006 edition certainly didn't help either. Over the 24 years history of the original MarktRock more than 1400 artists performed at Marktrock, more than 5 million people visited the festival and it launched several Belgian artists.