How ESNS Stayed At The Forefront of European Music: “It Feels as Relevant as Ever”

By Thomas Smith – Editor Billboard UK

For the past four decades, Eurosonic Noorderslag (ESNS) has played a crucial role in Europe’s music scene, spotlighting upcoming talent and creating a hub for the exchange of music across borders. The rollcall of future superstars across the years is laughably long, full of festival headliners and cult heroes, while the continent’s market has been shaped by these gatherings and opportunities to network and do business.

The enormity of the occasion is not lost on the team that works tirelessly to bring ESNS to life. Anna van Nunen, the festival’s managing director, says that being a part of the 40th anniversary celebrations is “humbling”, while Robert Meijerink, head of programme, feels that the festival and conference feels as “relevant as ever” and continues to shape the music scene across Europe. Ahead of 2026’s event, the pair discuss how they’ll be marking the milestone, and the pressing topics that will feature at the event.

How do you balance looking back at past achievements, but also making the event future-facing?

Robert: There's so much to reflect and look back on, but I’m very happy that the festival is still fulfilling its role and its mission. A couple of years ago, I clearly remember we had some internal conversations about how we promote our mission even further, because it still felt like some people did not know what was being played on the radio in the neighbouring countries, or featuring on their festival lineups. It's very necessary and still urgent after all these years to open the minds of creative people, bookers, promoters, whether they are commercially in the game or not, to promote Europe – and all the different cultures and regions within that – in the best way possible.

How does that idea of promoting Europe as a whole come into this year’s event?

Anna: We want to focus on Europe as a whole with a unifying theme called Europe Calling. After 40 years of celebrating European pop music, we feel that we can say we have a European music market, but there’s also work to be done. Economically, for instance, Europe is the second biggest market worldwide after the US, but other markets are ramping up and growing faster. This is an important statement we should make about not just working in our own countries, but to be working and seen as one. With Europe Calling we want to make a statement that listening to music like Christine and The Queens from France and Judeline from Spain, can all fall under a shared European musical identity.

We need to unify that identity and provide support to each other. There are many festival organisers and bookers who are under great pressure now because of certain regimes or even democratically elected governments, who are not allowed the freedom of expression to organise at all because of their political leanings. At the conference we’ll have a session with leaders of a number of Eastern European festivals – such as Serbia’s EXIT Festival – about the difficulties of hosting their events and simply existing.

How do you see ESNS positioned heading 2026?

Anna: This conference has grown quite gradually looking towards catering to the needs of attendees. But on the other hand you also see that we don't just follow, but we also try to lead in several topics. For example, the work that Robert has been doing with his team over the years to lead with representative lineups, and make sure there are more women on stage. We now see that over half of the performers at ESNS are female-fronted acts, and other festivals are following suit. These are things that we really try to be a frontrunner on.

What can attendees expect to see at the 40th anniversary edition?

Anna: There's a lot to celebrate! We're diving into our photo archive for an exhibition, Then and Now, that will be held across the city, and there will also be an audio tour about the music history of Groningen – hopefully people will enjoy that and learn about all the past performers who came through the city.

On the conference side, we will certainly look at topics such as artificial intelligence, particularly in streaming, but also discuss how artists are using the tools so that we have a balanced, positive discussion about it too. We’ll also dive into the impacts of activism and artistic freedom on festivals and venues, but also for the musicians themselves. We're going to have a panel that'll explore how speaking out has influenced their career from an artist's perspective. As ever, it's about recognising the conversation, but also being at the forefront of the discussions and I hope we can achieve that this year.