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If contemporary festivals can be read as small, self-contained worlds, then Way Out West is one of those rare cases that keeps expanding what a “festival” might actually be. Not just music.  But an evolving system of temporary rituals — from screenings in the park to weddings in the middle of it all.

This year, Slottsskogen will also host a new Market dedicated to festival merch. The idea is straightforward, though not simplistic: creators of all kinds are invited to produce and sell their own self-made items under the WoW banner. There is no prescribed aesthetic, but there is a clear framework — everything must be sustainable and of high quality. In other words, the object is expected to carry a position, not just a design.

Here, merch is not an accessory to the festival. It is an extension of it — something that continues to circulate once the music fades and the final credits roll.

Way Out West is now the largest combined film and music festival in Europe and the third largest film festival in Sweden. Over several days, Slottsskogen becomes a layered environment where concerts and screenings run in parallel, and where the boundaries between audience and participant quietly dissolve.

Each year, the film programme presents around 35–40 titles, screened at CINEMA SLOTTSSKOGEN and in cinemas across Gothenburg. All screenings and events are free with a festival pass. The selection brings together feature films, documentaries, series, and short films, often with a strong focus on music and pressing social themes.

Since its launch in 2011, the programme has hosted premieres such as Searching for Sugarman, The Square, Boyhood, Sentimental Value, and Kneecap. In total, more than 300 films have been shown, forming a parallel archive of contemporary cinema within a music festival context.

Yet in recent years, what has quietly reshaped the festival is its shift towards lived experience. Over the past three editions, three couples each year have been invited to get married in Slottsskogen — within the festival itself, surrounded by crowds, sound, and movement.

That initiative continues in 2026.

Do you and your partner have a special connection to Way Out West or to any of this year’s artists? Or are you simply two music lovers wishing to mark your relationship unconventionally? Three couples will be selected to marry during this year’s festival, with one ceremony held each day: Thursday 13 August, Friday 14 August, and Saturday 15 August.

Each selected couple will receive a one-day festival ticket per person, along with eight additional one-day tickets for friends and family attending the ceremony and the festival.

In this combination of film, music, market, and intimate ritual, Way Out West increasingly resembles less a traditional festival and more a temporary city — one with its own logic, and its own ways of staging collective life.