Estéreo Picnic 2025: What Medellín Desperately Needs

• 🎤 Estéreo Picnic 2025 in Bogotá drew 170,000+ fans and featured huge acts like Olivia Rodrigo, Tool, and Justin Timberlake.

• 💸 The festival generated over $39 million USD in direct and indirect economic impact for Bogotá.

• 💃 Medellín has proven demand, with packed EDM festivals like La Solar and Ritvales showing the appetite for large-scale events.

• 🤡 Coachella and SxSW have turned into influencer cash grabs, while Estéreo Picnic focused on real music and real fans.

• 🧠 Medellín needs its own paid, international music festival to boost tourism, create jobs, and shift its global image.

Bogotá just pulled off something special. Estéreo Picnic 2025 wasn’t just a music festival—it was a city-wide cultural flex. Over four days, tens of thousands gathered to see Olivia Rodrigo, Justin Timberlake, Alanis Morissette, Tool, The Black Keys, and more than 70 other acts who actually matter. People came from all over Latin America, the U.S., and Europe. Hotels were packed. Restaurants were slammed. Taxis ran nonstop. Bogotá got paid—and looked damn good doing it.​

Meanwhile, Medellín was scrolling Instagram, watching the party from afar, wondering why we never get invited to the cool table.

Let’s talk about that.

Music Festivals Used to Be About the Music

Estéreo Picnic didn’t try to be the next Coachella or SxSW, and thank God for that.

Coachella is now basically a runway with background music. It's less about bands and more about brands. It’s a $600 selfie safari for influencers who treat music like a side dish. SxSW used to be a gritty discovery ground for indie talent and tech nerds. Now it’s a marketing circle-jerk with crypto bros and corporate panels sponsored by Pepsi. These festivals have been swallowed by capitalism, morphed into overpriced content farms designed to squeeze every last cent from attendees. Want to sit down in the shade? That’ll be $75 for a branded VIP tent. Want water that doesn’t taste like melted PVC? Get ready to Venmo a kidney.

What Estéreo Picnic did differently: it still gave a damn about the music. Big names and rising talent. Diverse sounds, from Latin pop to metal to electronic. No influencer gauntlet. No curated “brand experiences.” Just four straight days of live music, real fans, and a city leaning in, not cashing out.

Coachella was literally created in the late '90s as a reaction to the corporate greed of Woodstock ‘99. Fast forward 25 years, and it’s become that same monster, only dressed in linen and pretending to be spiritual. The irony is exhausting.

Bogotá Got the Bag

Now let’s talk numbers.

Over 100,000 people went to Estéreo Picnic this year. Bogotá’s hotels saw record occupancy. Uber drivers couldn’t keep up. Bars and clubs in Zona T and Chapinero threw afterparties that went until sunrise. Local vendors made serious money. The media attention alone was worth millions in free PR.​

The festival generated an estimated $154 billion COP (about $39 million USD) in economic impact. Of that, $116 billion COP came from direct spending on lodging, food, transport, and local shopping. Hotels alone pulled in nearly $29 billion COP. Souvenir and artisan sales added another $11 billion COP. An additional $38 billion COP came from the ripple effect across the economy.

Tourists spent an average of $1.7 million COP each (about $430 USD), and 18,000 of them were international visitors.

That’s not just a win for Bogotá, it’s a blueprint for Medellín.

Medellín Needs a Real Music Festival

Altavoz is great. But let’s be honest - it’s not Estéreo Picnic. It’s free, it's local, and it tries, but it doesn’t bring in the global names or the international crowd. That’s not a knock. It’s just reality. If we want Medellín to grow into a cultural heavyweight, we need something bigger. Something paid. Something real.

A multi-day festival in Medellín would be a goldmine. Parque Norte, Aeroparque Juan Pablo II, even the new convention centers could host it. Big brands would sponsor it in a second. The city would see a surge in jobs, tourism, and international press. Not just for one weekend, but year after year.

And more importantly, it would shift Medellín’s reputation. I asked Estereo Picnic's Sunday headliner Olivia Rodrigo, what her perceptions were of Medellin, and if she would be open to a similar festival her answer shocked me a bit, "I would 100% go there to perform. All that I know of Medellin is the negative stereotypes of the past and and the beauty of what I see of the city and surroundings of the city. I'd love to go, and experience it for myself. Isn't it still a little dangerous there?"

That last comment is a telling sign. Right now, we’re stuck in a loop of narco nostalgia and Gringo sex tourism. Every viral story about Medellín is about cocaine, partying with beautiful women, crypto, or American dudes getting robbed in Poblado. If we want to attract a better kind of visitor, the kind that actually cares about the city, we need to give them a reason to come.

You know what scares sex tourists off? A crowd of 80,000 screaming fans moshing to Rage Against the Machine in the rain.

Dear Mayor Fico: Bring the Noise

If you want to stop Medellín from being known as the discount Bangkok of Latin America, here’s your shot.

Work with private promoters. Invite big sponsors. Partner with local businesses. Make a Medellín Music Festival that reflects the real energy of this city - creative, loud, and fearless.

We’re already a digital nomad hotspot. We’ve got the nightlife. Now we just need the crown jewel: a world-class, international music festival that makes people say, “Damn, I have to be there next year.”

No more waiting for Bogotá to set the standard. Let’s make noise. Let’s bring rock tourists.

Let’s show the world that Medellín isn’t just watching from the sidelines, we’re ready to headline.