We Love Green Festival - Paris 2025

The editorial team had barely a krone left when we decided to throw everything at a trip to We Love Green in Paris — a festival so green that even Denmark should have been taking notes. We Love Green is nothing less than an experiment in sustainability: five stages, talks, second-hand records, urine compost and energy supplied by solar power, biofuel and hydrogen. Since 2016, the festival has shaped Bois de Vincennes, and here in 2025 it filled the forest edge with around 40,000 guests a day.

Le voyage "The journey"

We rolled through Paris on Metro 1 — final stop: Château de Vincennes. The train was packed, but calm, as if everyone had been assigned a place in a silent rave. People were dressed in homemade Charli XCX merch: hot pants, neon-green crop tops and plastic bottles filled with Sprite and vodka — mixed with the same seriousness as a teenager heading to a hafla in Ulvedalene. No one was making a scene. No one was jumping on the seats. They just sat there, swaying in time to the music coming from a phone speaker. As a Dane, it felt like being at a pre-party before Jägerbombs had even been invented — before we decided that good vibes require recklessness and stupidity.

We made our way through the forest and along winding paths, where the festival’s sustainable infrastructure really came into its own: wood-chipped walkways, non-slip rubber mats, illuminated signs every ten metres. That was crowd management done properly — something our own festivals ought to borrow. It made me want to send the organisers of Syd for Solen on a paid study trip.

Security checks and scanning were handled with airport-level precision — belts off, shoes off, water bottle off. One of the more pleasant things about being taken seriously for your safety. And then, suddenly, a mini-Coachella landscape opened up: palm-decked lounges, eco-barista stalls and a lovingly chaotic aesthetic mess.

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Le festival “The festival”

‍As we step into We Love Green 2025, sustainability is not just a tagline — it’s the festival’s DNA. From solar and hydrogen power to biofuel generators and 100% renewable electricity, it’s obvious that someone has put on their lab goggles and gone to work on green spectacle. And no, this is not “just” kombucha water with plastic straws — last year, 78% of waste was revalorised, and everything from nappies to printed matter was recently made with plant-based ink.

The Food Court was a fucking statement: every dish came on washable tableware with a €2 deposit, was composted and cleared away through dedicated biowaste pits. A 100% vegan selection, seasonal and priced at €10, that fed both heart and stomach. And it felt far more authentic than Danish food stalls, where everything has to be a concept if it’s going to survive a quarter. Here we saw young chefs with eyes that were glowing — honest, authentic and decent.

The talk stage — “Think Tank” — was a kind of linen-clad type of gathering with philosophers, climate nerds and entrepreneurs seriously discussing a +4°C world, youth activism and biodiversity. We quickly found the bar again. After all, you don’t come here to feel guilty.

The festival grounds felt like a green tech demo dressed up as a people’s party: plastic-free toilets, wood-chip mats, almost unlimited bike parking and direct encouragement to take the train. Everything was cashless, every payment included an NGO donation, and security was handled by a “Safer” app — like a digital womb.

Volunteers wandered around with earplugs and signs, and it all felt carefully thought through. As if someone had asked: what does a festival feel like if you’re not a 25-year-old man in Rains and a bucket hat?

People drank wine at 65 kroner a glass, smoked cigarettes by a compost sign and danced anyway. There were no moralising fingers wagging at anyone — just a genuine belief that you can party without destroying the planet. We Love Green wasn’t just a festival. It was a prototype.

La musique “The music”

‍Air

‍When we caught Air on their container-stage cage, it felt like stepping onto a French film set: minimalist, intimate tones and a hint of wine and flatulence. They opened with classics like Moon Safari and La Femme d’Argent — but when Charli XCX appeared for “Cherry Blossom Girl”, the universe exploded into emerald neon.

She dressed the vocal in brat energy, the entire LED wall mirrored her Brat aesthetic — and even the Air crew seemed to widen their eyes. Things sharpened when she slid in with a Bret Easton Ellis-like attitude into the song’s dreamy soundscape. Air tried to catch their breath after that — but the role of smooth elevator music was never quite reached again. Nothing could capture that energy again.

Parcels

Parcels in the rain was like opening a bag of sunshine inside a storm-battered tent. Their tight funk and ’70s groove — a mix of synth-pop and disco soul — hit everything from Lightenup to Ifyoucall and Safeandsound with magnetic confidence. On rain-soaked planks, they ran through Yougotmefeeling, while dark clouds threatened overhead, but the voice from the stage never went limp — it was warm, even though the sky was grey. Suddenly the drums and bass kicked into Overnight mode, and the crowd was pulled towards the front row, even while lost in mud. Guitar licks and three-part harmonies made every beat feel like a sunbeam in the rain.

Rumours of Troye Sivan were in the air when he appeared as a surprise guest. That sudden silence in front of the stage — the uneasy hush — was broken by a collective gasp and a crescendo of cheers. Whether it was him or “just anticipation”, we sensed a stateless surprise, and everyone was drawn towards the centre in something like an emotional mud ballet.

Parcels showed why their live shows are a global triumph. It was like watching a body of work turn into a rainbow ball of energy — warm, sweaty, unbeatable. The audience danced, sang along and melted into the rain in a symbiosis that made the raindrops feel like confetti. A feel-good kind of rave, wrapped in soul and pop, opening smiles and sparking hope.

Gesaffelstein

Then it got dark. Properly dark. Not “it’s evening now” dark, but the kind of black that felt orchestrated. And then he stepped forward — Gesaffelstein. Masked, cold, as if he hadn’t spoken to anyone since 2014.

Le Dark Prince. His scenography was as megalomaniac as the sound: a glowing red pyramid, ringed by black crystals and smoke, as if he were summoning something no one else had access to. It was techno with gravitas. It felt like a religious experience, if the religion were industrial bass frequencies and total domination. French decadence with a dystopian afterburn. People stood absolutely still for the first ten minutes. No one danced. We just stood there and received it. A woman behind me said “il est Dieu” — and for the first time in my life, it made sense to say that about a man in shoulder pads and latex.

Charli XCX

And then it was time for Charli.

We stood there in rain ponchos stuck to our bodies, the buzz was perfect, the expectations stupidly high. She could almost only disappoint. But she didn’t. She glided across the stage like a pop messiah on a rave retreat — bathed in strobe light, sweat and self-awareness. It was as if a thousand young women in lime-green hot pants and BRAT merch had formed up in front of the stage like a kind of pop-cultural Opus Dei — their sacrifice? Standing there all day, in the rain, in bras, hoping to be struck by something bigger.

The first beats of Von Dutch lashed out through the speakers like a starter pistol. From there it was one long BRAT ecstasy marathon. She played 360 with an arrogance that made it feel like her private runway. Club classics landed like a collective memory of Thursday-night raves and TikTok, Sympathy is a knife cut through the night with its wet, electronic desperation, and Guess — possibly the festival’s wildest moment — set the grass beneath us on fire. It was all choreographed, yet felt spontaneous. Over the top, but real. It was like watching your internet best friend become Beyoncé for one night — just without the filter and with considerably more hot pants.

There was arse. Lots of arse. Every other LED shot was a close-up, and no one complained. It worked. Because she owns it. Because it wasn’t calculated — it was built in.

But the sound… the sound wasn’t with us. It wasn’t Fred Again at Syd for Solen-level panic, but it was close. We were in a good spot too — right in the pit, between the barriers and the beer — and still several songs drowned in crowd waves and rain. When a chorus hit, you could see a thousand mouths moving without hearing a word. And yet it made sense. In front of the stage, Charli had built her own rave monastery: sweaty, self-punishing, devoted. She didn’t demand perfection. She just wanted us there. And we were.

There was a moment when she launched into I Might Say Something Stupid, and the rain stopped. Not symbolically. Actually. It wasn’t dripping anymore. The crowd looked up, and she looked down. And we stood there. All of us. Half-naked, half-wet, completely happy.

‍Reflection without reflection

We Love Green is trying to be a better world. And it almost succeeds. That is, if you ignore the sound during Charli, the technically sustainable but in practice lip-splitting reusable cups, and the ironic detail that DJs and techno heroes are flown in to play on a stage built from used pallets and a clear conscience.

But it was something, all the same. It wasn’t just “a good festival”. It was a kind of adult boarding school for people who like both strobe lights and structural carbon neutrality. A sort of climate-compensation rave in field uniform. I saw people hugging each other while sorting their food packaging. I saw a girl with false lashes talking passionately about the biodiversity of the forest floor. I saw a guy in a Balenciaga poncho balancing four reusable cups and asking where to hand in the sawdust. I saw myself reflected in all of it.

Maybe that’s the future. Maybe it’s just France.

And maybe we need both.