Spanish festival Sónar has confirmed that at least 38 acts, artists and bands have cancelled their performances at this year’s event, starting June 12 2025 in Barcelona. The festival is in crisis as the PR team has struggled to respond to a boycott based on Sónar’s parent company and their support for Israel.
The truth is there may be even more: the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel has called for a boycott of Sónar and claims “at least 59 participants” have already withdrawn from the festival. (PACBI may be counting multi-performer acts as “participants”; see below for the full list culled from Sónar’s website.)
Originally founded in 1994, Sónar is owned by Superstruct, which is in turn owned by a private equity firm called KKR. Notorious as one of the giants of the leveraged buy-out mania of the 1980s, these days KKR is known for investing in virtually any form of commerce that can turn a buck, from the defense industry to mining. At issue are their investments in portfolio companies that operate in Israel and in furtherance of the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
Adding to a portfolio worth more than half of a trillion dollars, KKR has also been snapping up festival producers and platforms. Among them is Boiler Room (via their purchase of ticket broker Dice); and, via KKR’s purchase in Superstruct, Sónar.
Like Boiler Room, Sónar has been under scrutiny from pro-Palestinian activists; event managers appear to be reading from the same crisis PR script. Like Boiler Room, Sónar has released an unsigned statement (three actually — the first was a corny and formulaic endorsement of human rights that failed to mention Gaza, Israel or KKR at all), then disavowed their owner, proclaiming they don’t like KKR and don’t support it while also enjoying KKR’s magnanimous grant of what they call “operational autonomy.”
(The two entities, unconnected as they are despite common ownership, are “finally” collaborating at this year’s festival too. It’s synergy and vertical integration all the way down.)
Like Boiler Room’s statement (which we addressed here), Sónar’s latest statement is a fundamentally dishonest document. Sónar, a brand, claims it will not send “a single euro” to KKR, its owner — a seemingly strong declaration but in reality a deceptive misunderstanding of how private equity ownership works. Sónar isn’t a donut shop — its owners aren’t snatching every dollar out of the till at the end of the shift like cartoon capitalists (though they very well could do this, tomorrow, if they wanted to). However they choose to manage the profits of their portfolio companies, KKR still owns the festival. KKR transforms customer loyalty into receipts, and those into equity (it’s in the name!) — and they are certainly planning to profit enormously from Sónar, Superstruct and their festival business via sale or spinoff.
Perversely, the authors of Sónar and Boiler Room’s unsigned statements — “the good guys,” if you want to believe they exist — should be encouraging boycotts, if they really want to escape from under the thumb of KKR’s malignant reputation as they claim. The sooner they’re cast free from the suffocating portfolio as an unprofitable and troublesome entity, the sooner they’ll be able to prosper and thrive again, right?
Perhaps it’s unfair to expect managers of a festival to campaign for people to boycott it. But perhaps it’s also a bit rididuclous to rail against your owner while being paid by them and working to their benefit and expect to be taken seriously.
Sónar’s latest statement is part of a FAQ, which also discloses just how many artists have dropped out of the festival this year and suggests how serious the crisis behind the PR flurry has become. Their latest statement — branded as “Sónar Responds,” lists 38 acts that have cancelled so far (one for “medical reasons”):
ARCA
EYRA
oma totem
DJ Paca
Rone x (LA)HORDE with Ballet National de Marseille
DJ SOSA RD
Tiyumii
Sega Bodega (for medical reasons)
15 15
ABADIR
Akyute & Alice Sparkly Kat
Amantra
ANCIENT PLEASURE
Animistic Beliefs & Jeisson Drenth
ASIA
Dania + Mau Morgó
DjSport
Emma dj
Forensis & Bill Kouligas
dj g2g
Heith, James K, Günseli Yalcinkaya & Andrea Belosi
Hello Sasy
Herbert & Momoko
Juliana Huxtable
KEBRA
Le Motel
NEW YORK
Nexus (B4mba & Mooki6)
Paquita Gordon
patten
Sara Persico & Mika Oki
Shannen SP
Shapednoise & Sevi Iko Dømochevsky
Shaun J. Wright
Sofia
Vica Pacheco
Ville Haimala
YESSi PERSE + laSADCUM.
