Broadwick Live are taking Magazine London outside. Six shows, two August weekends, a never-before-used stretch of Thames riverside and a stage built to frame the city skyline.
The team behind Printworks, Drumsheds and Silverworks Island have spent years proving that where you put a party matters as much as who is playing at it. Magazine Open-Air is the clearest statement of that idea yet. For two weekends in August, the grounds around Magazine London become an open-air dancefloor on the banks of the Thames, running from mid-afternoon into the evening with the capital’s skyline doing the set design.
It is deliberately not being sold as a festival. Six standalone shows, each one built as its own moment, in a riverside spot that has never been used for music before.
What Broadwick have built
A bespoke open-air stage anchors the site, designed by Paris studio Matière Noire and shaped to work with the architecture around it rather than fight it. The production brief pushes at technical limits, the sound has been engineered for clarity across the whole dancefloor rather than just the front, and the site layout has been planned around how crowds actually move through a space over seven hours.
The timings are part of the design too. Shows start in the afternoon and finish at 10pm, which gives you the full arc from sunlight to the city lighting up across the water. Food and drink comes from Shapes Bar, Mangal II and a run of London independents.
“We’ve always believed location is central to the experience, not just the backdrop to the music,” says Luke Huxham, Managing Director at Broadwick Live. “Magazine Open-Air is brand new to London this summer, purpose-built on the Thames where the architecture and the skyline become part of the experience.”
The full line-up
Weekend one
- Friday 14 August: Our House with Meduza and James Hype, plus Cristoph, Dombresky, Layla Benitez b2b Brina Knauss and special guest Nora En Pure.
- Saturday 15 August: Josh Baker b2b Max Dean, an extended set and a London back-to-back debut.
- Sunday 16 August: 15 Years: The Soulection Experience with Joe Kay, Sango, DJ Tunez, Wayne Wonder, D Double E and more.
Weekend two
- Friday 21 August: Amelie Lens b2b Sara Landry, a UK exclusive, with SPFDJ, DAX J, Grace Dahl and DJ Hyperdrive.
- Saturday 22 August: Purple Disco Machine, joined by Flight Facilities, Jayda G and more.
- Sunday 23 August: RNB & Slow Jams closes the series at sunset, line-up to be announced.
Getting there
Magazine sits on Greenwich Peninsula, five minutes on foot from North Greenwich on the Jubilee line and under half an hour from central London. The same links that serve The O2 bring you straight to the door, with easy connections from London Bridge, Liverpool Street and Stratford. The address is Magazine London, 11 Ordnance Crescent, Greenwich Peninsula, SE10 0JH.
Where this sits in Broadwick’s summer
Open-Air runs alongside Silverworks Island in the Royal Docks, which returns with an upgraded main stage and a season of its own. Come September the operation heads back indoors, with Drumsheds lining up its autumn programme.
Tickets
All six shows are on sale now through the Magazine Open-Air series page, and individual show links are in each of our guides above. Two weekends, six very different rooms with no roof on any of them. Pick your night and get in early, because the riverside capacity here is finite and the line-ups are not quiet ones.
Images: Broadwick Live.
