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Apr 02, 2024

The story of Flow Festival 2023

From Lorde and Blur to High Vis, Suede and Jockstrap, here's what went down in Helsinki In partnership with Flow Festival Helsinki’s Flow Festival returned this weekend for its penultimate edition at

From Lorde and Blur to High Vis, Suede and Jockstrap, here's what went down in Helsinki

In partnership with Flow Festival

Helsinki’s Flow Festival returned this weekend for its penultimate edition at the stunning Suvilahti venue in the city centre, bringing starts big and small from across the globe.

Headliners Blur, Lorde and WizKid were joined by the likes of Suede, Jockstrap, Pusha T, Caroline Polachek and more at a festival with wide-ranging appeal and a unique outlook.

If you weren’t there to enjoy the festivities, enjoy the story of Flow Festival 2023 with these stunning photos.

Flow 2023 was the festival’s penultimate edition to be held in the beautiful Suvilahti site in the middle of Helsinki, an abandoned power plant with awe-inspiring industrial structures.

Suede’s Friday evening set saw Brett Anderson as a man possessed, rampaging across the stage and into the crowd, defying ageing and continuing the band’s beautiful renaissance.

Another highlight of Friday came from Jockstrap, who debuted new music and showcased their Mercury-nominated debut album in the Black Tent.

For most of his headline set, WizKid was spraying the crowd with bottles of water from the stage, set against the ever-present pyro.

Across the three-day festival, the Front Yard stage kept the beats rolling in a tucked away corner of the site, with help from stars of the house and techno scenes.

In the cavernous Silver Arena on Saturday night, Pusha T brought his new album ‘It’s Almost Dry’ to Helsinki for a set of boundless energy and unrivalled flows.

During her headline set, Lorde swapped the sunny sonic aesthetics of ‘Solar Power’ for a return to her dancier, darker roots, interpolating her songs within one another and debuting two new tracks – this really was the start of a new era.

An hour later in the Black Tent, Amyl & The Sniffers were looking for no such reinvention – their fantastically energetic, chaotic brand of Aussie punk works just fine, and they rang in Sunday morning with a messy, brilliant set.

Among the large contingent of Finnish artists at the festival, rapper Sexmane was one of the most well-received, placing languid bars over arena-sized metal guitars and live drums.

London’s High Vis shook the Black Tent to its foundations on Sunday afternoon, with their mix of hardcore and Britpop delighting the crowd, ending with chaotic scenes for the anthem ‘Trauma Bonds’.

Caroline Polachek’s early evening set on the final night was an artistic triumph, as she ran through highlights from her lauded second album.

Christine & the Queens’ Sunday night set was a thematic, moody masterpiece, drawing exclusively from his most recent album.

As their European festival tour wrapped up, Blur were beaming throughout their hit-packed Flow set to close the festival, sending Flow 2023 off with a raucous party.

…and that’s that for 2023! See you in Suvilahti next year for one final dance?