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Vodafone Paredes de Coura 2023

Death, taxes, rain at the Vodafone Paredes de Coura festival. This year, it fell in fewer people than usual, though: the festival reported a 80k attendance figure (an average of 20 thousand people per day), as opposed to the usual 100k. The result was a (even more) pleasant experience for everyone: there were virtually no queues (except, of course, for food at peak hour), most grass stayed green for most of the festival, as it should, and shows didn’t feel crowded. It was a difficult festival to book bands for in 2023, according to the festival director, as the only big headliner capable of drawing thousands by themselves was Lorde. On the bright side, there was only one late cancellation, as The Last Dinner Party could not travel to Portugal; MДQUIИД., who had already performed in the first of five official warm up nights at the town centre, took their place in the lineup.

The next edition of the festival – which already has five “incredible” confirmed bookings, although it will take a few months until they’re announced – will take place from 14-17 August 2024.

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Vodafone Paredes de Coura 2023: our picks

© Hugo Lima | fb.me/hugolimaphotography | hugolima.com

Well, it’s that time of the year again. First things first. Let’s start with what 99% of the people want from us every single summer: our printable blocky timetable, which you can download below, in a variety of formats:

PDF | PDF mobile, wed/thu | PDF mobile, fri/sat | XLS

And, while you dream about the current weather predictions actually happening…

…keep reading to find out about our top 10 picks for this year’s festival, as always mostly focused on the smaller names of the lineup. And scroll to the bottom for a Spotify playlist featuring not only the artists featured below, but also acts like Dry Cleaning, Jessie Ware, THUS LOVE, or Crack Cloud.

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Vodafone Paredes de Coura 2022: our highlights

Ah, how we missed this scenery.
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live

Vodafone Paredes de Coura 2022: our top picks

The last time I spent two summers in a row without making the yearly pilgrimage to Paredes de Coura was 20092010. This broke uni student had spent all his yearly savings by traveling to Barcelona for Primavera, looked very deep into the lineup, and couldn’t find any reason to do it. Fast forward to 2020. “It’s been 10 years since my last trip to Barcelona, I’m coming back”. For reasons, nobody did; for the same reasons, the little town of Paredes de Coura stood unusually empty during the summers of 2020 and 2021. And even though I ended up returning to Barcelona in 2022, there was no way I’d skip Vodafone Paredes de Coura ever again like in the previous decades. Better yet, the absolute chaos we endured in Primavera Sound ’22 only made me long for peaceful Coura even more. Even if there’s a (very likely) painful airport experience ahead of me.

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live

Vodafone Paredes de Coura 2019: the review

Sometimes it’s hard to be objective and unbiased when writing about a festival that is such a big part of your life. Except for two (very) unremarkable lineups that made me stay home, since I was old enough to go to college all my summers involved a trip to Paredes de Coura (and a painful trip back, too). When you’re a kid, they say you’ll eventually get older and boring, in a process they call “becoming an adult”. This usually comes with amazing perks such as ceasing to listen to any new music whatsoever, stopping seeing your (also ageing) friends, having great conversations about changing diapers with your remaining friends (yes, the other couple with kids you always go vacationing with to some shitty beach full of other couples with kids and the odd mother-in-law). Obviously, a multi-day, non-kid friendly, rural music festival such as Festival Paredes de Coura seems like one of those things that are amongst the first to drop from your newfound “adult life”. Except you don’t have to be that person; and is there anything better to remind you of that than going there and finding all your friends in the same place, same month, year after year, all over again? (Well, other than imagining the smell of those diapers.)