SXSW London
SXSW London has shared details about the ticket sale for 2025’s upcoming inaugural event in the U.K. Taking place in east London’s Shoreditch neighborhood from Jun. 2-7, the upcoming event will be the first time that SXSW has taken place in Europe, in addition to its home in Austin, Texas, and expansion into Sydney, Australia.
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Passes for the entire event across the Conferences, Music and Screen Festivals will be available to purchase, as well as for individual separate programming strands. Tickets will go on sale on Nov. 21 and a 25% discount will be applied to those who purchase a pass from the general sale before Dec. 19. With the exclusive price offer, prices range from £488 for the individual programme strand passes, to £975 for platinum passes. For further ticket information, head to the SXSW London website.
SXSW London has also announced additional details about the venue partners throughout Shoreditch. These include Truman Brewery, Village Underground, Rich Mix, Shoreditch Town Hall, Shoreditch Church, Christ Church Spitalfields, Dream Factory (Chance St & Rivington St), Kachette, Bike Shed Moto Co, Shoreditch Studios / Over the Road, and Protein Studios.
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Billboard has been confirmed as the event’s first official partner, and will host a night of music during the festival with a globally-renowned artist performing at the event. The show will also be ticketed to the general public.
Mike Van, president of Billboard said, “We’re thrilled to partner with SXSW London for the inaugural 2025 event. This collaboration underscores our shared commitment to supporting and celebrating the global music community. Billboard will bring a night of live music celebrating world class artists, both established and on the rise, and will offer fans a truly unique experience within the festival.”
The festival will partner with local charities and community groups to provide 500 complimentary passes to ensure “the rich diversity” of the city is represented throughout the events and programming.
“We’re thrilled to share how many incredible venues are working with us already for SXSW London’s Shoreditch takeover next June,” said Katy Arnander, director of programming for SXSW London. “Shoreditch is renowned as a vibrant centre for creativity and technological innovation, as well as for its diversity, energetic youth culture, global cuisine and nightlife. We’re excited to be working closely with local stakeholders to ensure the festival creates a positive impact for the community it will take place in.”
In October, SXSW London announced that it would begin the process of accepting session proposals from the public across the various programming strands. The festival says that “thousands of session proposals have already been submitted from over 50 countries across the world.” The submission portal will remain open until Nov. 29 at the festival’s website.
Back in April 2021, it was announced that SXSW had signed a “lifeline” deal with P-MRC, a joint venture between Penske Media Corporation and MRC, making P-MRC a stakeholder and long-term partner with the Austin festival. P-MRC is the parent company of Billboard.
The inaugural SXSW London will take place June 2-7, 2025, at more than 20 venues throughout the city’s Shoreditch neighborhood, marking the first time the longstanding event will happen in Europe.
As the gears get turning, the event has also announced new hires Clare Barry, the former marketing director of Cannes Lions; writer and film programmer Anna Bogutskaya; and artistic curator Beth Greenacre. Organizers forecast that SXSW London will generate more than £75 million (roughly $97 million) for the U.K. economy.
According to its booker Adem Holness, a London native, the event will also emphasize the city’s many cultures while working to connect artists and industry workers from local scenes with international audiences and potential partners.
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“The thing we can do uniquely is pull together reflections of the cutting-edge, grassroots music communities and — if I’m just thinking about the music program — how people can get involved in what is happening at the cutting edge and how they might be able to work with those different international music scenes to develop them and develop ideas with them,” he says. “That’s what I think SXSW London should be.”
This focus is thus not just on music, film and technology, but the cultures these things emanate from. This, Holness envisions, will create a gathering that “doesn’t just feel like a series of performances, but like you’re experiencing culture and moment around that.”
The event will also incorporate broader European perspectives, with Holness and his team focused on programming that highlights “the cutting edge of music and culture in Europe and beyond.” As such, he adds, the goal is to “make sure our neighbors and friends feel like they’re a big part of what we’re trying to do.”
Still, the 20,000 anticipated attendees will land at an event site that is distinctly London, with Holness saying that Shoreditch “feels in a way like a microcosm of what London is. It’s a hub of technology, but you’ve also got incredible nightlife. You’ve got distinct diasporic communities in and around that area and obviously the whole of London. But I think [Shoreditch provides] a great opportunity for people who might not have been to London before to understand who we are and what we’re about.”
SXSW London follows the 2023 debut of SXSW Sydney. The original event in Austin has been happening since 1987 and has grown to become one of the biggest events in the global music calendar, attracting hundreds of thousands of musicians, creatives, filmmakers, media companies and music industry executives to the state of Texas every March.
“I hope that the Austin and Sydney teams, when we’ve done our take on it, feel proud of it as well,” Holness says. “I hope they feel like it lives up to the incredible work they’ve done, but also has its own flavor.”
In April 2021, it was announced that SXSW had signed a “lifeline” deal with P-MRC, a joint venture between Penske Media Corporation and MRC, making P-MRC a stakeholder and long-term partner with the Austin festival. P-MRC is the parent company of Billboard.
Austin’s South by Southwest conference and festival is heading to the United Kingdom, marking the first time that the world-famous event has been held in Europe.
Due to take place over one week in June 2025, the inaugural edition of SXSW London will follow the same format as its Texas-based forerunner and feature “inspiring and challenging” keynote talks, music performances and showcase leading innovations in tech, gaming and film, organizers said in today’s announcement. Names and details of who will be appearing will be announced in the coming months.
Held annually in the city of Austin since 1987, SXSW has grown to become one of the biggest events in the global music calendar, attracting hundreds of thousands of musicians, creatives, filmmakers, media companies and music industry executives to the state of Texas every March.
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Amy Winehouse, Billie Eilish, Dua Lipa, Ed Sheeran, Stormzy and Wet Leg are just a few of the music artists who played the festival early in their careers.
Previous guest speakers have included Dave Grohl, U.S. president Barack Obama, Steven Spielberg, Michelle Yeoh and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, while Twitter, Foursquare and Airbnb are among the tech start-ups that SXSW famously helped launch.
Next year’s debut of SXSW London continues the event’s global rollout, which began in 2023 with the launch of an Asia Pacific edition in Sydney, Australia.
The second installment of SXSW Sydney takes place Oct. 14-20 with the main U.S. SXSW festival and conference scheduled for Mar. 7-17 in Austin. The addition of a new London edition makes the event series “an indispensable three-stop tour for the global creative community,” said organizers in a press release.
Although 2025 will be the first time that a SXSW-branded event has taken place in Europe, the organization did team up with Mercedes-Benz to host an annual conference, called the me Convention, between 2017 and 2019 in Germany and Sweden, targeted at the tech, design and creative communities.
“We couldn’t be more excited to bring the SXSW experience to London,” said SXSW co-president and chief brand officer Jann Baskett in a statement. He called next year’s planned event “an incredible new opportunity to highlight the elements that make SXSW unique in one of the most vibrant cities in Europe.”
Randel Bryan, managing director of SXSW London, said the festival “will build on Austin’s incredible legacy” by providing “a platform for the next generation of creative talent.”
While detailed plans for SXSW London are yet to be announced, organizers said the event will be held in dozens of venues, art galleries and clubs in the East London district of Shoreditch and will have its own “distinctive personality,” reflecting the U.K. capital city’s “internationally renowned cultural life and creativity.”
Alongside keynote talks and music showcases, the conference will include “boundary pushing” visual arts, design and fashion programming, with exhibitions and interactive and immersive experiences taking place in public spaces across East London. The city’s proximity to other major creative and tech centers in Europe will also shape programming as organizers look to attract creative talent from across the continent.
Commenting on the announcement, London mayor Sadiq Khan called the plans “a historic opportunity” for the city “to once again bring the world’s most exciting talent together.”
In April 2021, it was announced that SXSW had signed a “lifeline” deal with P-MRC, a joint venture between Penske Media Corporation and MRC, making P-MRC a stakeholder and long-term partner with the Austin festival. P-MRC is the parent company of Billboard.
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