WACKEN 2026: ICONIC FEST DELIVERS CLASSIC METAL THUNDER
JUDAS PRIEST, SAVATAGE, SAXON, POWERWOLF and SABATON led a massive four-day bill, while ROSE TATTOO and RUNNING WILD said goodbye. Rain fell on DEF LEPPARD, dust flew during MUNICIPAL WASTE, and THIS ROCKS! contributing videographer Cecil Grosskopf II kept the cameras rolling through it all.
By Cecil Grosskopf II with Erin Michael Fox
On-site reporting and video: Cecil Grosskopf II, Contributing Videographer | Feature written and edited by Erin Michael Fox, Editor-in-Chief
Any metalhead who has followed Wacken Open Air for long knows that the weather is a real thing. Some years are hot and dry. Others become famous for mud. In 2015, Wacken itself described a festival of rain, cold nights and brutal ground conditions. The rain was so severe in 2023 that organizers eventually stopped additional fans from entering the site, something that had never happened before. Last year topped them all, with 2025 setting a Wacken rainfall record.
That history was worth remembering as the 2026 edition got underway in northern Germany. The first days were hot, rain arrived later in the week, and by Saturday the ground was dry enough for a MUNICIPAL WASTE crowd to kick up a dust cloud in the pit. At Wacken, sometimes the same dirt that swallowed boots one year ends up hanging in the air the next. Cecil Grosskopf II ventured to Wacken, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, a small village in northern Germany, roughly 50 miles (80 km) northwest of Hamburg to experience the rain, the dust and the thunder of the most famous heavy metal festival in the world.
The bands gave the weather plenty of competition. JUDAS PRIEST, SAVATAGE, EUROPE, SAXON, POWERWOLF, SABATON, BLACK LABEL SOCIETY, IN FLAMES and DEF LEPPARD gave the festival the kind of heavyweight lineup expected from Wacken, while two performances came with a real sense of finality. ROSE TATTOO was playing its last German show. RUNNING WILD was playing its last show, period.
Grosskopf also came home talking about bands he had not necessarily expected to be talking about. KADAVAR, WYTCH HAZEL, VELVET RUSH and ANGELUS APATRIDA all made strong impressions, which is part of the point of spending four days moving between Wacken stages. The headliners get people through the gates. Once everyone is inside, the schedule can take them somewhere they did not plan to go.
WEDNESDAY: 90 MINUTES OF ROSE TATTOO AND A FEW NEW NAMES
Wednesday was brutally hot, but ROSE TATTOO had more important business to handle. The Australian hard rock veterans were playing their final German show, and they spent roughly 90 minutes doing what ROSE TATTOO has always done: playing tough, hard-driving rock 'n' roll without dressing it up too much.
There was history attached to the set, but it did not sound like a memorial service. The band played hard, the songs still had teeth, and the farewell aspect was there for anyone who wanted to think about it. Mostly, ROSE TATTOO sounded like ROSE TATTOO.
VELVET RUSH was one of the day's pleasant surprises. The German hard rock band had the songs and stage presence to stand out on a bill where it is very easy for a lesser-known name to disappear between major attractions. "Shake That Thing" was a good example of what worked: direct, catchy hard rock played with enough attitude to make people stop and pay attention.
Grosskopf caught the song from the crowd.
If VELVET RUSH brought the hooks, KADAVAR brought the weight. The Berlin band's slow, BLACK SABBATH-informed heaviness turned out to be one of Wednesday's biggest surprises. The riffs were huge, the songs were allowed to breathe, and there was no hurry to get anywhere. At a festival where somebody is almost always playing faster than the band on the stage next door, KADAVAR proved that slowing everything down can hit just as hard.
Mexico's EL CHIVO drew an especially enthusiastic Latin American crowd and supplied one of those scenes that reinforces just how international Wacken becomes once the festival is underway. RICKY WARWICK also turned in a strong set, leaning into his newer material rather than building the performance entirely around the better-known parts of his career.
It was a good first day because it offered both sides of Wacken immediately. ROSE TATTOO arrived with decades of history behind it. A few hours later, bands that many people on the grounds had never seen before were giving them something new to talk about.
THURSDAY: SAVATAGE, EUROPE, GUITARS AND A LOT OF RAIN
Thursday was packed with recognizable names, beginning with a particularly interesting appearance from ULI JON ROTH. The former SCORPIONS guitarist revisited material from Virgin Killer and brought guests including Mille Petrozza and Roland Grapow into the performance.
Roth does not need much help making early SCORPIONS material interesting. His playing remains immediately identifiable, and "Pictured Life" sounded right at home at Wacken decades after it was recorded. Grosskopf's video also gives a much better sense of the performance than a description of guitar tone ever could.
YNGWIE MALMSTEEN followed his own familiar script and gave his audience exactly what it came for. There was ubiquitous guitar, a substantial dose of shred and a myriad of neoclassical flash. Malmsteen largely concentrated on playing, which worked perfectly well. Nobody walks into a Yngwie Malmsteen set hoping he will dial it back.
One of Thursday's real finds was WYTCH HAZEL. The band's Christian themes are part of its identity, but what stood out live were the songs. The harmonies were excellent, the hooks landed immediately, and there was an old-school heavy metal quality to the material without the band sounding like it was simply reenacting somebody else's record collection.
"Still We Fight" shows exactly what made the set work. It is melodic, heavy and extremely hard to get out of the head once the chorus lands.
EUROPE was another Thursday standout, and the band sounded tremendous. Anyone who still reduces EUROPE to "The Final Countdown" is working from a very incomplete picture. The catalog is MUCH deeper than that, and the band played Wacken like musicians who know exactly how much material they have to work with. It was one of the strongest straight-ahead rock performances of the day. The band's new album "Come This Madness" drops September 25th led by the powerful, rocking cut "One On One."
The stakes felt different when SAVATAGE took the stage. Opportunities to see the band have not exactly been plentiful, and expectations around any current SAVATAGE performance are understandably high. At Wacken, the music still had the drama, muscle and strange grandeur that made the band important in the first place.
"Strange Wings" was a particularly good choice to have on video. There is no need to make a case for the song or update it for 2026. Turn it up and it makes the case itself.
By the time DEF LEPPARD hit the stage, the weather had changed. Rain came down through much of the band's first Wacken performance, soaking a crowd of tens of thousands while the band worked through a 19-song set. Considering Wacken's history, it was almost a proper initiation for the Sheffield rock brigade.
The rain also gave Thursday a very different ending from the heat that had dominated the opening of the festival. Wacken has spent plenty of years fighting mud, flooded access roads and miserable camping conditions, so a major hard rock band playing through a downpour hardly qualified as unprecedented. Still, watching DEF LEPPARD under the lights with rain falling over the crowd failed to fully connect as it should.
FRIDAY: SAXON, PRIEST AND RUNNING WILD'S LAST RIDE
The cooler Friday weather was welcome, and the day's lineup was loaded. DANKO JONES brought an uncomplicated blast of rock 'n' roll, while BLACK LABEL SOCIETY delivered the thick guitars and heavy groove expected whenever Zakk Wylde and company walk onto a festival stage.
SAXON was excellent. There is no shortage of veteran metal bands still touring, but surviving and remaining genuinely convincing are two different things. SAXON remains convincing. The band still attacks these songs instead of carefully preserving them. For fans who got a taste of the Brit's live set from their latest live platter, "Eagles Over Hellfest," this Wacken performance was exactly what they needed to hear.
That is especially obvious during "Motorcycle Man." The song dates back to SAXON's much-revered 1980 album Wheels of Steel, but there is nothing fragile or quaint about it live. Grosskopf's footage catches a veteran band playing an old song with plenty left in the tank.
IN FLAMES also had a strong Friday, with Anders Fridén visibly enjoying himself onstage. That matters more than it may sound. Festival sets can become mechanical when bands are moving through compressed schedules night after night, and IN FLAMES never looked like it was simply checking off another date.
The day's heavyweight performance came from metal gods JUDAS PRIEST. Rob Halford remains almost absurdly good. At 74, he can still reach for the high notes, but more important, he still sounds unmistakably like Rob Halford. That voice is one of the basic sounds of heavy metal, and very little about the Wacken set suggested that age has taken away its essential character. With rumors of a new record already in the works, this revered juggernaut shows no signs of slowing down.
PRIEST doesn't need a clever angle. The band has one of the deepest catalogs in metal, an immediately recognizable visual presence and a frontman who can still deliver the goods. On a bill filled with younger bands and huge productions, JUDAS PRIEST simply looked like it belonged exactly where it was. On top.
Friday night ended with a giant of metal we will sadly, never see again. RUNNING WILD played what was billed as its final show, closing out a career pirate metal par excellence that stretches back more than four decades. The band went for roughly 90 minutes, mixing classics with newer material while the stage production kept getting bigger.
Searchlights scanned high into the air, jets of pyro blazed across the stage and explosions punctuated the set. Nobody involved appeared interested in a restrained goodbye. For a band so closely associated with adventure, pirates and outsized heavy metal imagery, quietly waving goodnight would have felt wrong.
"Riding the Storm" is exactly the kind of song that should survive on video from a night like that. Grosskopf caught RUNNING WILD near the end of the road, on one of the biggest metal stages in the world, going out at full volume. Running Wild went out with a bang!
SATURDAY: MODERN METAL, THRASH AND A DUST CLOUD
By Saturday, the rain was gone and the festival grounds had changed again. ORBIT CULTURE got the day moving with the sort of precision and heaviness that has pushed the Swedish band steadily up festival bills. This was not a curiosity slot from a band that might be good someday. ORBIT CULTURE already sounded comfortable on a Wacken stage.
"While We Serve" shows why the band's profile keeps growing. It is huge without becoming sloppy, modern without sanding away the aggression, and it hits hard enough to translate even through a camera in a festival crowd.
NEVERMORE carried a different burden. Warrel Dane had one of those voices that cannot simply be replaced by finding somebody who can hit the notes. Grosskopf had never seen the band during Dane's lifetime, so there was no old live performance in his head to compare against the 2026 version.
That may have made the important part easier to hear. The current vocalist, Berzan Önen, handled a very difficult job without trying to turn himself into a Warrel Dane impersonator, and the NEVERMORE material still worked onstage. That is about as useful a test as a returning band can endure.
Spain's ANGELUS APATRIDA was another excellent discovery. There are obvious TESTAMENT and EXODUS elements in this talented band's speedy thrash, but those comparisons only get a listener part of the way there. The band played with enough confidence and violence to leave its own mark on the afternoon.
"We Stand Alone" is a good introduction for anyone who missed the set.
ANGELUS APATRIDA – WE STAND ALONE
HARDLINE provided a complete change of pace between all that metal. "Rhythm From a Red Car" brought melodic hard rock into the Saturday run and gave Grosskopf another very different performance to bring home on video.
And then, MUNICIPAL WASTE arrived.
The Headbangers Stage was an ideal place for the Richmond thrashers. MUNICIPAL WASTE works best when there is very little distance, physically or psychologically, between the band and the people trying to knock each other over in front of it. "You're Cut Off" caught the room already moving.
The second MUNICIPAL WASTE video is even better because it catches something no set list could explain. By Saturday, the ground was dry — very dry. As the crowd tore into the pit during "Sadistic Magician," hundreds of feet started throwing dirt into the air until the whole thing looked less like a mosh pit and more like a dust storm.
For Wacken, that was funny. This is a festival whose mud years are legendary. In 2023, rain got bad enough to stop additional fans from entering. In 2025, the festival had its wettest year on record. Two nights earlier in 2026, DEF LEPPARD had played in the rain. Now MUNICIPAL WASTE had people disappearing into a brown cloud.
Grosskopf was close enough to get the whole beautiful mess on camera.
CASTLE RAT followed its own path, combining heavy music with elaborate costumes and a visual presentation that would have been hard to ignore even from across the grounds. The important thing was that the songs held up once the costumes had done their job and gotten everyone's attention.
Saturday night belonged to two bands that understand scale. POWERWOLF delivered roughly two hours of fire, theatrical heavy metal and the kind of production that seems designed around the dimensions of a major European festival stage. The band does not treat flames and scenery as optional extras; all of it is part of the show.
SABATON went even further to close the night. The drum riser was a World War I tank, which tells most of the story before a note is played. SABATON has spent years building its military-history concept into the music, artwork and stage production, and Wacken gave the band enough room to go as big as it wanted.
After four days that had already included legendary singers, final shows, rain, fire, guitar heroes and a MUNICIPAL WASTE dust storm, a tank onstage somehow seemed like a reasonable way to finish.
WACKEN IS BIGGER THAN THE RUNNING ORDER
A lineup poster can tell someone why Wacken is important. It cannot tell them what four days there actually feel like.
The 2026 bill delivered more than enough star power. ROSE TATTOO said goodbye to Germany. ULI JON ROTH pulled early SCORPIONS history into the present. EUROPE sounded excellent, SAVATAGE justified the anticipation around its appearance, and SAXON showed that "veteran" does not have to mean "slower."
JUDAS PRIEST still sounded like JUDAS PRIEST, which may have been the most reassuring thing anyone heard all weekend. RUNNING WILD left for good under a barrage of fire. POWERWOLF and SABATON closed Saturday with productions large enough to remind everyone why European metal festivals have a reputation for doing things at a scale that is difficult to reproduce elsewhere.
But Wacken would be a much less interesting festival if that were all it offered. VELVET RUSH got noticed. KADAVAR surprised people. WYTCH HAZEL had songs stuck in heads after the set was over. ANGELUS APATRIDA made new fans. MUNICIPAL WASTE turned dirt into weather.
There is also the part nobody can put on the poster: moving between stages, running into people from all over the world, wandering through the Wasteland, eating something at an hour when nobody should be eating it, getting rained on and realizing that the band is going to keep playing anyway. A festival this large becomes its own temporary place, and the bands are only part of what people remember when they leave.
Videos help. They can preserve "Strange Wings," "Motorcycle Man" or RUNNING WILD playing "Riding the Storm" one last time. They can show exactly what a MUNICIPAL WASTE dust pit looks like. They still cannot reproduce being there. For a serious metal fan, that is probably the best argument for Wacken. At some point, watching everybody else make the trip is not enough. Pick a year. Buy the ticket. Figure out the flight, the train, the camping and the weather later.
In spite of the thunder and lightning, Wacken Open Air is resilient. There's a significance to that. Somewhere on the grounds of the most famous heavy metal festival in the world, one of the biggest bands in the world will be playing while another band someone has never heard of is about to become a new favorite. It brings metalheads of all types together and that is what's most important about this crucial event.
Yet another massive blast of heavy metal thunder is in the books. Make your plans for 2027 now - Wacken Open Air is an experience EVERY metal fan needs to experience at least once.