In a new interview with Billboard, Thomas Jensen, founder of Germany’s Wacken Open Air says that the festival is “surviving. Every year is a challenge and this one will be hard - I don't think we'll lose money, but the profit will be eaten. But we have to get the best experience for the fan. If we're not doing that, we're not successful. It's as simple as that.”

This year’s edition sold out within 12 hours and tickets to the 2016 fest are already long gone. It’s cash that’s sorely needed, says Jensen, “to pay last year's debt.”

Read more at Billboard.

The Wacken Open Air 2015 was full of extremes: 145 liter of rain per square meter in five days, knee-deep puddles of mud and over 160 hours of live metal from over 30 nations. Now there is another extreme: the Wacken Open Air 2016 is sold out for the eleventh time in a row. The first 45,000 tickets were sold in about two hours after the pre-sale started.

“It’s been a rough week for the whole Wacken family. Maybe at other festivals people would have left. But everyone -fans, crew, residents - kept strong and moved together, since for all of us Wacken is more than just a music festival. Being sold out once again maybe is the biggest thank you we ever received,“ says Thomas Jensen.

Because of the enormous request and the high number of orders the promoters assume that there will be some double bookings and cancellations because of missed due dates for payment. There will be an update as soon as all the orders are checked and tickets are still available.

The 75,000 metalheads that already have a ticket can look forward to the following bands performing at the W:O:A 2016: Blind Guardian, Ministry, Steel Panther, Eluveitie, Dragonforce, Callejon, Axel Rudi Pell, Legion of the Damned, Orden Ogan, Orphaned Land, Borknagar, Eskimo Callboy, Henry Rollins Spoken Word, Therion, Unisonic, Kylesa and Pyogenesis. 

More acts for the line-Up 2016 will be published in September at the Hamburg Metal Dayz in the Hamburger Markthalle.