THE WAITING IS THE HARDEST PART

(why we haven’t released the full lineup yet)

With a little over two months to go to Left of the Dial, more and more people are starting to ask us when we’re going to release the timetable. You know, the full daily schedule for each venue, so you know exactly which band is playing where.

We totally understand you’re all excited and want to start planning your festival days, but there’s one important reason why we can’t give you those details right now: we haven’t completed the lineup yet. And we really don’t want to release an incomplete timetable, as it would mean you might have to reschedule your plans later on. 

‘Then just complete the damn lineup!’ you’re probably thinking. 

We would, if only we could. In fact, maybe we will announce the full lineup this Friday. But maybe we won’t. 

Please allow us to explain:

This year, we have room for roughly 160 artists or bands and since Left of the Dial caters to a lot of different people, we’re trying to create a lineup with the right balance of different genres. 

If we feel that a certain band fits well within that balance, we’ll invite them to play. Sometimes we’ll receive an answer within the hour, often it takes a bit longer, because the drummer needs to check if they can get the time off work, for example. Or the band is planning a longer tour and they need to make sure the dates don’t clash. There really could be a number of practical reasons why bands need some extra time to confirm. 

Especially in the summer with loads of people being offline enjoying their holidays. 

At the moment of writing this post, the lineup consists of 133 artists. Fourteen more bands have already confirmed to play Left of the Dial and they’ll be part of the lineup announcement this Friday. We’re still waiting for an answer from about the same number of bands. If they confirm on time, they will also be part of this lineup announcement.

But it’s also possible that one of those unconfirmed artists realises at the last minute that Left of the Dial takes place on the exact same weekend as their brother’s wedding and they won’t be able to make it after all. This means we’ll have to invite the next artist on our list and they’ll then have to check if they can make it work. So the whole waiting game starts again. 

If that happens, the lineup won’t be complete this Friday and we’ll just have one more announcement. 

And then we’ll finish the timetable as soon as humanly possible and share it with you. 

Promise. 

Big love,
The Tom Pettys of Left of the Dial 

PS: Please, please, do not see this as an invitation to plug your band or any other band, we do absolutely have a list ready of bands we’ll invite if another doesn’t confirm, so for this year we’re good!

 

A VENUE UPDATE

(sometimes enough is enough)

Probably the most newsworthy thing about this post:

With the confirmation of all 26 stages, we finally know the exact capacity of Left of the Dial 2026. At this very moment, we have 665 general admission tickets left. Once we reach the last 350 tickets, we'll move to the final price tier, which obviously means that right now there are only 315 tickets available at the current price.

The over-explanatory bit:

Let's start with the great news that, as of today, all 26 venues for Left of the Dial 2026 are confirmed. Which, in all honesty, feels like a huge weight has been lifted off our shoulders.

The last venue we've added barely needs an introduction. It has been part of the festival for several years as 160K. It just took a little longer to confirm this time because it recently changed owners, and with the new ownership came a new name: Barrio. We've seen quite a few legendary shows there over the years, so we're extremely happy to have them on board again.

We also had our eye on one more venue. Or rather, not a proper music venue at all, but an old cinema right in the middle of the city centre. The building had been sitting vacant for years, which feels quite outrageous for such a central location, if you ask us. We figured that if we could show its potential as a music venue during Left of the Dial, maybe it would set some wheels in motion.

For months we tried. We'll spare you the details, but let's just say we got close. For a long time, we were 99% sure it was going to happen. Unfortunately, a couple of days ago, the owners of the building suddenly decided we weren't welcome after all. Some corporate decision. Nothing we can do about it.

At first, we felt a little defeated. We always have a tendency to want more, go bigger and do things differently. But mostly, we really wanted to show you a side of Rotterdam you may not have seen before. Even if it meant fixing up a venue without running water.

But then we started thinking: we already have so many great venues. We even have one with a view of the Erasmus Bridge. We'll have three churches, proper music venues, nightclubs, a salsa school and whatnot. Maybe that's enough. We still have tons of other stuff to do, so for once, let's not complicate things and just be happy with what we've got.

Don't get us wrong, we still say: fuck corporate decisions. But we won't let them stand in the way of the greatest festival ever. Because yes, if it's up to us, this is still going to be the best edition of Left of the Dial so far.

We'll do everything we can to make that happen. All we need from you is to show up in October, give the artists your undivided attention, and keep the Drunk Uncle-ness to a minimum.

Big love,
The retired venue hunters of Left of the Dial 

WE ARE HUMAN AND WE NEED TO BE LOVED

(a year of non-stop happiness)

It wasn’t our best week. Nothing terrible happened, but things weren’t going to plan. Deliveries getting lost, laptops crashing, people cancelling really important meetings about venues… just the usual small things that are sometimes harder to handle than at other times. We’re only human after all.

But then we saw an interview with a Dutch comedian.

He said that if he plays a show in a theatre and 800 people have enjoyed themselves for an hour and a half, he has created 1,200 hours of fun. 

That got us thinking.

Including artists, crew, volunteers and ticketholders, roughly 6,000 people come to Left of the Dial. If they all have at least one great hour a day during the festival, we’ve created well over a year of full-time happiness.

That got us all motivated again. Forget about laptops and meetings. Next week we’ll be back, working harder than ever to stretch that one great hour a day into two great hours. Maybe even three.

Big love,
The optimists of Left of the Dial 

ROTTERDAM HAS TOO MANY TALENTED ARTISTS

(not in general of course, only when it comes to the Left of the Dial Wednesday)

At the Left of the Dial office, things usually go like this: we come up with something small that would be fun to add to the festival. We all agree that this small thing is manageable, both logistically and financially, and get to work. Then, a few weeks later, somehow this small thing has turned into something much bigger, and we're all working three times as hard to make it happen.

That's basically how the Extra Extras came about, and it's also why we ended up publishing a 300-page magazine.

More or less the same thing happened while planning the Left of the Dial Wednesday.

A while ago, we explained at length why we added the Wednesday to the festival, but in short: we just wanted to showcase some of the amazing artists we have in Rotterdam. For free, so they would be guaranteed a substantial crowd. We figured we'd put two bands in Rotown and two next door at Bar3, and that would be it.

The free tickets were going fast, so we decided to add another venue to create some extra capacity. At the same time, we were trying to select the Rotterdam artists we wanted to invite, and that turned out to be the biggest challenge. There are so many Rotterdam-based artists who absolutely deserve your attention that picking only six bands was extremely difficult.

So we did the one thing we promised ourselves we wouldn't do: we expanded the Wednesday once again. We swapped Bar3 for a bigger room and added another venue. And while we were at it, we also decided to have three acts at each venue.

This means:

The Left of the Dial Wednesday will now take place in Rotown, Uniek, Stalles (fka Centraal) and the glorious Arminius. On Friday, we'll announce the lineup, consisting of 12 artists. Still nowhere near enough to properly represent the Rotterdam music scene, but we have to start somewhere.

If you're still looking for tickets for the Wednesday, here's the important bit:

The Left of the Dial Wednesday was sold out, but now that we have four venues, another 100 tickets will become available after next week.

The tickets are still free, but there are two requirements: 

-          You need to have a Left of the Dial 2026 ticket

-          You need to sign up for the waitlist, which you can find on our website

 In next week's newsletter, we'll explain all further details, so please keep an eye on your inbox. And your spam folder, where our newsletters tend to end up sometimes.

And before our DMs explode with even more talented bands from Rotterdam: sorry, the Wednesday lineup is complete. Maybe you'll get another shot next year, but that really depends on the success of this year's Wednesday.

 Because after all, it's still just an experiment. And if the 21st of October turns out to be the worst Wednesday night in the history of festivals worldwide, we'll probably do something entirely different next year.

That's a bridge to cross later. For now, let's just celebrate Rotterdam.

All hail to the Butt Plug Gnome!

Big love,
The vegan kapsalon-eaters of Left of the Dial 

A MESSAGE FOR THE PERSON WHO ASKED ABOUT THE 2027 DATES

(this is going to be confusing)

Left of the Dial 2027 (so not this year!) will take place on 14/15/16 October. And we're 99% sure also on Wednesday, 13 October 2027. 

We know, it’s still over 120 days until Left of the Dial 2026, and even a lot longer until the 2027 edition, so who cares? 

Well, one person does. The only problem is that we can’t remember who it was.

Some time ago, someone asked us about the 2027 dates because their job had a strict policy requiring people to request time off a ridiculously long time in advance. As it turns out, we gave that person the wrong dates. We checked all our DMs and emails to set the record straight, but found nothing. Maybe we accidentally deleted their message, maybe it was someone we met at a show somewhere. 

Either way, we wanted to say to that specific person that we’re sorry we gave the wrong dates, and that we hope your boss is a bit flexible and that you can still make it to Left of the Dial in 2027.

In case you’re wondering why we picked those specific dates, we’ll gladly explain, but be warned, it’s not the most interesting story. 

Somewhere in February, we posted about how Left of the Dial always takes place on the same weekend as Amsterdam Dance Event. 

We explained that we pick the ADE weekend for a very simple and practical reason: some of the venues we use for Left of the Dial usually put on electronic music, but since everybody who’s into that kind of music is in Amsterdam that specific weekend, they normally wouldn’t be open, giving us the opportunity to turn them into Left of the Dial stages for the weekend.

We never know when ADE will take place, but they’ve been pretty consistent in picking the third weekend of October, so when this person asked, we were still convinced that’s when Left of the Dial 2027 would take place.

Until this week. 

Since venues are a bit scarce in Rotterdam, we always try to confirm the bigger ones well in advance, but now we heard that one of them wasn’t available on the third weekend of October. That made us think.

We’ve always chosen that weekend so we can use certain venues, but a few of them have closed, and others have told us that bar sales are so good during Left of the Dial (thank you, beer drinkers!) that we’re welcome any date. 

Basically, there’s no real reason anymore to stick to that specific weekend. 

We felt really bad that we gave someone the wrong dates, but in the end, it really came down to picking the days when the most venues were available. That turned out to be 14/15/16 October 2027. (And like we said, most likely October 13 too, but we’ll save that for another time.)

You didn’t ask, but now you know!

Big love,
The date changers of Left of the Dial

PS1: Just to be sure: Left of the Dial 2026 still takes place on 22/23/24 October. And also on Wednesday October 21. You need an extra ticket for the Wednesday though and they’ve sold out weeks ago. Sorry.  

PS2: Unless ADE also decides to change their dates, their festival and Left of the Dial 2027 will take place in different weekends. Which is probably great news for the 3 people who have complained about always being torn up between the two.