Over on the Baltic coast of Poland, Open’er Festival just took place for its 22nd edition. Situated on an unfinished military airport, the roots of this festival go far beyond the music and culture that unite people for four days. 

Open’er is wildly different to the average festival experience. Unlike most, it's nowhere near as oversaturated with live music. Forget about downloading Clashfinder. It won’t be worth it, since you can navigate your way between stages without the stress of missing a last song or an opening number. 

Kicking off on Wednesday, July 2, this year's lineup consisted of headline performances from Massive Attack, Future, Nine Inch Nails, Muse, and Linkin Park. Several artists shone a light at Open’er this year, but few stood out as exceptional performances.

Check out the acts that topped it all!

Arriving in a stunning floor-length gown with her toes bare, Raye opened with the soulful vibes of her unreleased track, “Where The Hell Is My Husband?”, a song she recently debuted at Glastonbury. 

"I'm an absolute drama queen and I love more than anything a dramatic ending," she tells the crowd as her brass band slams into a jaw-dropping finish. And if her entrance wasn’t ground-shaking enough, Raye followed up with her emotionally-penned "Oscar Winning Tears".

Raye continued to take the audience through a setlist of her most gut-wrenching anthems – an experience that was oddly just as heartbreaking as it was healing. "Ice Cream Man", a song about sexual assault, brought fans to tears. And as raw as that subject is, Raye’s exploration of it was rich and somewhat therapeutic.

Opening the festival's mainstage, Raye welcomed thousands of people with soulful vocal skats and moments of improv from her band. Before exiting the stage, the singer played another unreleased track, titled "I Know You're Hurting”, and announced that she’s working on a new album.

Over at the Tent stage, ScHoolboy Q’s DJ was busy warming up the crowd with deafening sirens before blasting into Lil Yachty’s “Poland”, Travis Scott’s “Antidote”, and “FE!N” – a holy trinity of back-to-back bangers, which immediately riled up the crowd. 

Shortly after, ScHoolboy joined him on stage and got straight into “Man of The Year”. "I guess I'll say hi to y'all. What the fuck is up yall?" he said. Although fresh off a show in Germany, ScHoolboy’s energy never dropped. He stayed bouncing around the stage, signing autographs, and at one point took a fan's phone to sing into it as they excitedly Facetimed a friend. 

ScHoolboy wasn’t playing when he curated this setlist. He ran through major tracks “Hands on the Wheel”, “Collard Greens”, and “Break the Bank”. "I love y'all to death," he said before exiting the stage. A totally mad set for an insanely appreciative crowd.

Back on the main stage, British experimental trip-hop project Massive Attack spent 90 minutes headlining this festival with the most avant-garde, obscure performance of the day. Their set was expectedly dark, ominous, and sensual all at once. The visuals on the jumbotrons had the audience completely hooked as the band showed politically engaged AI clips of Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and the devastating rubble in Gaza and, controversially, the war between Poland and Ukraine.

The latter was a huge gamble, but Massive Attack has always been a political band, with a message to convey. Thankfully, the audience was on the same wavelength of anti-war and anti-genocide, and roared with cheers as each clip showcased solidarity to countries who are experiencing heinous war crimes.

It may seem standard to expect people to come together in times like this, but each day, news headlines and those with an obscene amount of political power prove to us daily that we aren't all wired with basic empathy. 

The sound system across the entire festival was phenomenal. The vibrancy in “Inertia Creeps” was a standout of the night. Every single bass pluck protruded its way through the speakers, and Damon Albarn’s vocals were as crystal clear as on record. As far as headline sets go, Massive Attack’s show was a political statement. Each song had a beautiful message, either sonically or by the distorted graphics that accompanied it (or both). Elements of the show tested your patience, but not negatively – each song encouraged you to look deeper. To face yourself.

The following day, the site had picked up a considerable amount of traffic. Nine Inch Nails opened the main stage with blistering strobe lights. Soaring guitars and industrial noises beckoned everyone's attention for their experimental song “Wish”. By now, the sun was settling, and although it wasn’t quite pitch black, the dark blue skies added to the dystopian moodiness of their set. 

The outro for “Piggy” featured a chaotic frenzy of discordant keys from frontman Trent Reznor and heavy drum pelts from Ilan Rubin. Listening to Nine Inch Nails on record is an experience, but capturing them live is an otherworldly journey. The camera work for their performance was gripping, too, as videographers darted around the stage, grabbing numerous angles and close-ups that perfectly matched the frantic electronic and jazzy elements of the band’s sound. 

Towards the mid-section and into the end of their set, the group played several hits, including “Closer”, “Every Day Is Exactly The Same”, and “I’m Afraid of Americans”. The latter was an ode to the late David Bowie, whom they’d originally written the song with. Overall, Nine Inch Nails brought a genre-bending concoction of warped sounds and mysterious energies to Open’er, and the crowd loved it.

Before you could even see her, Little Simz's vocals blared through the main stage speakers on Friday evening. Set up with her bassist Marla Ketha, keyboardist Amarni, and a backing track, the rapper's performance was simplistic yet fun. Opening her set with “Free” (a song that has recently blown up after the artist's sticky lawsuit against British producer Inflo), the song set off with sombre riddims and a mutual feeling of escapism as fans boomed the adlib “free” during the chorus.

“I Love You, I Hate You” went down like a storm as fans sang their hearts out and the rapper looked at the audience, whispering a delicate, “I love you too,” right back. Little Simz's mainstage set presented itself as a concoction of nonchalant R&B, neo-soul, dance, and hip-hop vibes. “Venom” was mighty and quick-witted, while “Mood Swings” was dirty on the bass and heavy on the club vibes. Throughout her performance, she plugged positive affirmations of being a black girl, and though performing to a predominantly white audience, the response was welcoming. 

Performing nothing short of a five-star theatre production on Saturday evening was British experimental pop auteur FKA twigs. The show was split into three acts. "Act I: Practice" introduced distorted sounds of rubble that swiftly transitioned into warped techno. The dancer's cat walked across the stage, hugging the other and expressing contemporary dance moves. In just the first few minutes, twigs had created a visual art form of high fashion, experimental dance and unique sounds. 

twigs finally appeared on a podium, while dancers got down into their boxers and stripped the singer for “Perfect Stranger”. The show was provocative as the singer pole-danced elegantly and intertwined her body around her dancers in snake-like movements. Every inch of the choreography was sharp and thrilling.  

Act 2 introduced the "State of Being", a stage of the show where the pulsating thuds in “Eusexua” resonated as intense heartbeats. The stage dynamics and set-up for “Perfectly” were unreal. From beginning to end, twigs’s set was a statement of empowerment – of the human body, of queerness, and of individuality. It was incomparable to any other act of the entire festival.

Arriving on a rising platform full of moss was the goated Doechii. As expected, her flow and breath control were effortless, and paired with DJ Miss Milan, the two acted as each other's hype women. Throughout her set, she revealed deep cuts from old mixtapes for the OGs who sang back to her word-for-word. 

The singer perfectly captured female rage for “GTFO”, as she pelted her way up and down the stage, and drones captured 360 black and white aerial views on the jumbotrons. The hard rock-inspired spin on “Anxiety” was a pleasant surprise as it was coated in crazy guitar shreds before dropping into the original Gotye sample. Being the respectful queen she is, Doechii asked the crowd how to say “make some noise” in their language, before slightly butchering the sentence and giggling slyly. Dedicating “Slide” to the lovers, the singer excitedly shared, "This is my first time in Poland and I'll never ever forget it.”

And so Open’er 2025 concluded four days of forward-thinking headline performances, striking stage setups, and unforgettable setlists.