All 75,000 tickets for W:O:A 2021, which will take place from July 29 to 31 2021, have already been sold! The organizers have now announced the first bands on the festival lineup! Metal fans can look forward to: Judas Priest, Hämatom, Dropkick Murphys, As I Lay Dying, Rose Tattoo, Tarja, Lordi, Death SS, Venom and Moonspell.

This year's Wacken Open Air couldn‘t take place due to the current pandemic. Although it’s much more quiet in the small village Wacken in Schleswig-Holstein, the tradition announcing bands for the upcoming edition during the last festival day still remains! 

With legendary Judas Priest, who will catch up on their “50 Heavy Metal Years” show, Irish folk-punks Dropkick Murphys, As I Lay Dying with top-class metalcore, singer supreme Tarja, and the black metal godfathers Venom can be unveiled with the first announcement and mark five acts that were already confirmed and eagerly awaited for 2020.

The new announcements are complemented by five fan favorites such as Hämatom with their only festival show in 2021, Australian hard rock veterans Rose Tattoo and the dark metal masters Moonspell. Lordi have come up with a "Special Horror Castle Show" and thus fit even better with the annual festival motto "Horror" than they already did before! The Italian occult metallers Death SS form the end of this first band wave and also skillfully join the new motto. The official festival trailer can be seen below.

“We are truly grateful for our fans trust they had given us - without even knowing about our lineup plans! Therefore we hope that they are as happy as we are about the first announcements for 2021. We are still in contact with many bands that were planned for this year, as well as have a few surprises for you, that we will unveil in the upcoming months,” explains W:O:A festival co-founder Holger Hübner.

Thomas Jensen adds: “As there is so much far away from normality this year, we wanted to keep our tradition to announce the very first bands on our line-up for the upcoming festival edition. We can hardly wait to welcome these and many other great artists to Wacken next year. We will use the time until then to prepare a spectacular live experience with our next years‘ new motto 'horror'.”