“Everyone wants to play our festival,” beams NOS Alive founder Álvaro Covões as he greets Music Week in Lisbon the day before proceedings kick off. “We started in 2007, and we’ve built something beautiful and now the bands want to keep coming back. If you look at the map of Europe, we are far away for bands that travel by road so if they come to Portugal it’s because we’re good!”
But don't just take his word for it, the proof has very much been in the pudding over the years.
“The first edition was Pearl Jam, Linkin Park and the Beastie Boys with Smashing Pumpkins, Blasted Mechanism and more on, it was amazing,” he says. “Pearl Jam, Pumpkins and Blasted Mechanism they all played it – and they’re all back on the bill this year! So many acts always come back.”
Emblazoned prominently on its website, NOS Alive Festival proudly declares itself as “one of the best festivals in Europe” and it very much lived up to that billing this year, bringing an eclectic line-up together including Dua Lipa, Pearl Jam, Arcade Fire, Smashing Pumpkins, Jessie Ware, Arlo Parks, Ashnikko, Aurora, Benjamin Clementine, Sum 41 and more.
If that wasn't enough, the views alone proved breathtaking, with all of the action taking place beside the beautiful River Tagus. It's not hard to understand why, since launching, it has attracted the likes of Metallica, Foo Fighters, Muse, Radiohead, Green Day, Coldplay, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, St Vincent, Rage Against The Machine, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Arctic Monkeys, Lizzo, Rina Sawayama, Sam Smith, The Cure, Lil Nas X, Florence + The Machine, The Strokes and hundreds more to Lisbon. It feels like a festival and a holiday wrapped into one.
Across three days, Music Week – alongside a host of worldwide media – was invited to witness it first-hand in Lisbon. There, a post-Glastonbury Dua Lipa put in an astounding headline display, especially with new tracks from Radical Optimism, while Pearl Jam’s imperious, hits-heavy top billing set even saw the president of Portugal, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, watching them from in the crowd just behind Music Week. “Pearl Jam are playing and we’re called NOS Alive – it's perfect!” grinned Covões. It took Eddie Vedder a long time to leave the stage afterwards, the Nos Alive masses quite literally refusing to stop applauding them long after the set ended.
Elsewhere, Aurora was so popular there were thousands of people listening to her from outside the tent, Arlo Parks did a brilliant job as a last-minute replacement for Tyla, while a colossal audience assembled for the Smashing Pumpkins, who followed in the footsteps of their acclaimed O2 Arena set in proving they are a band very much operating at the peak of their live powers right now.
This is not like Coachella or festivals that people go to because of, ‘I need to be seen!’... The most important thing here is music
Álvaro Covões
Yet excellent live performances have never been enough for the founder – a festival organiser who is clearly obsessed with customer experience, so much so he likes to spend a lot of his time across the days in the crowd rather than backstage.
"I'm in the middle of the people, feeling what they’re feeling," he says. "Our job is to do something more on top, to be more creative [for them].”
To this end, NOS Alive is increasingly leading the way for the festivals of the future. Alongside top talent and some sensational drone-based light displays each night, NOS Alive has, as part of its offering, an exclusive and dedicated space for expectant mothers called “Future Moms”, it offers scholarships to scientists, and more besides.
Here, Álvaro Covões opens up about the growth of NOS Alive over the years, how he approches curating it, the challenge in finding the headliners of tomorrow, and much more besides...
Dua Lipa headlines NOS Alive Festival 2024 (Photo: Rita Seixa)
NOS Alive bills itself as one of “the best festivals in Europe”, what do you believe sets it apart from the likes of Mad Cool, Primavera and more?
“First of all, because it’s in Portugal! (laughs) We love music here. This is not like Coachella or a lot of festivals that people go to because, ‘I need to be seen!’ This is different. The most important thing here is music. I’ve done festivals since 1995, and when I decided to do this festival, my idea was to build one that had the target of being one of the most important festivals in Europe, for it to be included in the Champions’ League of them. And for this we needed to do one not only for Portuguese people, but for everybody. We have a lot of stages and if you look at the line-up, you need to choose which act you prefer to see.”
In the past you’ve commented that you want all of the stages to feel like a main stage – do you think too many festivals get too caught up in the pursuit of headliners at the expense of the rest of the bill?
“Of course, we sell a lot of tickets because of the headliners – for a festival, you have to have at least one act that everybody wants to see, and you need a stage in which the whole capacity of the festival can view them, wherever you’re watching. But what I like is also for surprises to come from the smaller capacity stages. Portugal's audiences are eclectic. They love pop and yet are open to rock. The music industry is different now; we don’t depend on labels and radio [to guide us with what to book]. It's very difficult to figure out what the people want to see, you just have to go off a gut feeling.”
Eddie Vedder during Pearl Jam's triumphant headlining set at NOS Alive 2024 (Photo: Hugo Macedo)
So who do you view as the possible NOS Alive headliners of the future?
“When I started festivals, the idea was to get medium [size] bands all together more than stadium bands. Now, the audiences want stadium acts headlining the festivals – shit! That’s difficult. We’re still working towards finding the next Pearl Jams, Foo Fighters and Depeche Modes, the next generation of Arctic Monkeys and Radioheads. We need talent [to come through], it’s a big challenge. We need to keep the old talent, but we need newer acts to follow the likes of Ed Sheeran and Dua Lipa. But that doesn't depend on promoters of festivals, it depends on record companies, managers and people. They need to be creative. We need new headliners.”
So how far ahead are you planning headliners at any given time?
“I’m planning for 2026 already!”
Arlo Parks plays NOS Alive Festival 2024 (Photo: Matilde Fiesch)
Away from music, one of the most impressive aspects of NOS Alive is that you have a separate area for pregnant women at the festival…
“We are the first festival in the world to do it, to have that pregnant area – we need to support them. We’ve done a lot of things for the first time here. We’re a small country so we need to be creative and find things that are important. I remember going to British festivals – and they’re amazing – but there’s nowhere to sit and eat! Here we have lots of places to sit, eat and rest. We are also doing something with our sponsor this year that's an experience in which deaf people can feel the sounds of Dua Lipa. We like to be inclusive. We need to bring everybody to the festival. There is our responsibility project for the festival, too – we support two scientists per year. Another thing is, you know companies that have annual events where they have their speeches with their CEOs and afterwards they have a party? It’s always boring. So we convinced them to do their annual conferences here at the festival – to do them at a place where people actually want to be! I love to do different things.”
NOS Alive gets funding from the Portuguese government to advertise to foreign customers. To what extent do you feel pressure to not only promote your festival, but also the nation as a whole?
“For us, international clients represent 30% of the 50,000 people, they come from the UK, Spain, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, North and South America. Word of mouth has been so important in helping us spread. This is a small country, just 10 million people, so we need to bring people in!"
Álvaro Covões photo: Matilde Fiesch
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