Øya continues to raise the bar of the perfect festival experience

Header photo by Anna Lerheim Ask “Tusen takk” - a thousand thanks - is a phrase I hear and say repeatedly during four days in Oslo. At Øya, there’s none of the edge that can feature at other festivals, everyone is super polite, to the point of nodding appreciatively during sets rather than forming a mosh-pit - which would be a very un-Øya thing to do - although it does break with that convention when the mood requires it. Rather than having to play catch up with sustainability, representativeness and inclusivity, the festival has led from the front since its inception, a prime example is each of Øya’s four stages not only have ramps, but chargers for electric wheelchairs installed.I speak to Claes Olsen, one the co-founders, the week before the 2026 edition and he says, “It's an exciting year, but every year it’s like we’re starting over again. We're up in the north of Europe and we feel we need to do a little bit better to get artists to come up here.” The artists keep coming, and there are a lot of them to see over Øya’s four day run. From the very beginning, Øya’s manifesto is that 50 percent of the artists would be homegrown and they’d get a decent slot on the bill. “We mix it ...