Sónar

Ricard Robles, Enric Palau and Sergio Caballero founded Sónar in Barcelona in June 1994 as a festival of advanced music and multimedia art, with fewer than 6,000 people, the days at the CCCB and the nights at Apolo. It split into By Day at the MACBA and later Fira Montjuïc, and By Night at the Fira Gran Via from 2001. Attendance reached a record 126,000 for the 25th anniversary in 2018. Then things got complicated. Superstruct took a majority stake in 2018 and was itself bought by KKR in 2024. In 2025 more than 30 artists withdrew over that link, and in October 2025 the three founders left. The 2026 edition moved to a single site. On 27 October 2026 the festival published a funeral video, a death notice in La Vanguardia and a condolence book, under the words Sónar is dead, 1994 to 2026. As of the end of October nobody had cancelled anything, 2027 tickets were still valid, and most Spanish press read it as a relaunch stunt. We list it as unclear.