In July 2024 I attended the Kappa Futur Festival, the biggest EDM festival in Italy. I had already booked a trip to Turin, Italy, because it’s my #1 favorite city in the country, and when I was browsing for things to do during my visit I discovered that my trip coincided with the music festival. Without doing any research, I purchased a three-day pass for the festival. Ticket in hand, I started browsing online for information about what to expect… and didn’t find very much!
So, having now attended Kappa FuturFestival, I decided to write a review of my experience. I wrote the review in two parts: first, before the festival started I reviewed the communication and organization before the event. Then, after attending, I added in my photos and reviewed my experience on the festival grounds. Hopefully this will help you know what to expect if you are thinking about attending Kappa Futur Festival 2026!
Note: Nobody seems to agree on where to put the spaces in the festival’s name. The official website writes it as Kappa FuturFestival, but their Instagram is futur_festival and lots of websites spell it either Kappa Futur Festival or KappaFuturFestival. 🤷🏻♀️ I’m spelling it in lots of different ways in this review so that hopefully anyone looking for this information can find it, no matter how they spell it in their search bar!
What is Kappa Futur Festival?
Kappa Futur Festival is an annual electronic music festival held in Turin, Italy. It’s usually held in the early summer, towards the end of June or in early July. Kappa Futur Festival is held at Parco Dora, about five kilometers north of the center of Turin.
🪩 The 2026 Kappa Futur Festival will be held from July 3rd to July 5th (Friday to Sunday). 🪩
Kappa Futur Festival Tickets
Personally, I bought my 2024 tickets really early – back in November 2023, when I booked my trip to Turin and happened to notice the festival would be taking place. I believe I was in the first round of Early Bird tickets, when the price was €130 for three days. As the festival drew closer, prices increased.
For 2026, I forgot to check the early bird prices and they were sold out by October, 2025. General admission tickets aren’t on sale yet, but should be available on the festival’s website soon.
It’s also possible to buy single-day passes, but they release these closer to the event. They usually release these tickets before they announce the lineup, so they’re a good option if you have little time and are flexible on which DJs you see, but they’re risky if you’re really looking forward to seeing one particular artist.
Kappa FuturFestival Lineup & Schedule
I bought my tickets well before the festival announced the lineup, as they had a generous return and resale policy. They released the information in three waves:
- First, they released the list of performers in three parts: mid-December, mid-January and late February.
- Then, in late March, they announced which artists would play on each day.
- Finally, they released the actual schedule about ten days before the festival began.
Once the actual schedule was released you were able to go into the official Kappa FuturFestival app and save the shows you wanted to see to make your personal schedule.
Getting Ready for Futur Festival
Unfortunately, I found the lead-up to KFF 2024 to be a bit disorganized. I’m writing this part of the review on June 29th, 2024 which is six days before the festival starts.
For me, the biggest inconvenience is that they haven’t released the rules and restrictions yet. Their website says that if you don’t abide by the restrictions on what you can bring inside you won’t be able to enter the festival grounds, but six days out they still haven’t said anything about things like bag size restrictions, whether I can bring spray sunscreen or the rules around portable chargers (which apparently were prohibited last year?). I know that a lot of foreign visitors are stressing about this as there are posts on Reddit from people worrying about what to pack.
In the end I made the decision to just carry my Travelon anti-theft fanny back, which meant I couldn’t carry very much stuff but I also wasn’t at risk of losing much to pickpockets. I didn’t experience any pickpocketing attempts but I heard in the group chats that many other people did fall victim to these thieves.
Author’s Note: Hopefully in my photos from the festival you’ll get a better sense of the sizes and shapes of bags that they did allow onto the grounds.
Similarly, the official festival app is a disappointment. There is a chat area with different forums for exploring Turin, locals, international visitors, favorite stage, favorite artist and lost and found, but literally every chat is just spammed with people trying to buy and sell tickets (and drugs). The chat seems to be unmoderated, so most people have set up separate group chats on WhatsApp.
The Kappa FuturFestival Experience
I’m writing this part of the review after the festival is finished. In the end I decided to attend the festival for two of the three days, as all of the DJs I was interested in seeing were on Friday and Sunday. On Saturday, I spent some time exploring Turin instead (and I highly recommend you do the same, either before or after the festival!).
For some important background here, I am a bit older (I was 40 when I went to KFF) and although I’m a lifelong EDM fan, this was my first large music festival. That means I don’t have much to compare it to, and I can only refer to my own expectations when I talk about what worked well and what could be improved.
Entering the Festival Grounds
I took public transportation to and from the Kappa Futur Festival on both Friday and Saturday. From where I was staying it was most convenient to take a tram to the Piero Della Francesca stop, which is on the west side of Parco Dora. From looking at the festival app it seemed like this was going to be close to the entrance that was assigned to my ticket, but in the end I discovered that you kind of had to circumvent the entire park to enter, so be prepared for a 10-minute walk from any transit stop to the gate.
At the time of your first entrance you will be given a wristband that gets linked to your ticket. You can then use the official KFF app to load money onto your wristband to pay for food, drinks, souvenirs and the “clean” bathrooms (more on those later!). No cash or cards are accepted at any vendors at the festival – it’s all done through your wristband. If there’s money left after the festival they will refund you within a couple of days.
I arrived in the afternoon on both days, and they didn’t seem to care too much if I used the A Gate or the B Gate. Later in the evening I believe they were more strict. Both gates had police officers and drug-sniffing dogs, so keep that in mind if that affects your choices. You should also expect one or two bag searches as you enter the festival grounds.
Festival Facilities
The facilities that I noted at the festival included toilets, lockers (with phone chargers), wristband reloading stations (where you could use cash or card if you didn’t have the KFF app), information booths and drug-testing stations.
Of these facilities, the only one I used was the washrooms, and I have to say it was a pretty negative experience. Most of the bathrooms were porta-potties, and while they were labeled as being for males and females, everyone was just using whatever. They were already very dirty by early afternoon and only became more disgusting as the night went on.
For €2 you had the option of paying for the “clean washrooms”, which were porta-potties installed in a trailer with basic plumbing. These had cleaning staff who kept an eye on them, but they were still pretty basic. The other big pro with paying for these toilets was that they had running water where you could wash your hands with soap.
Food & Drink at Kappa Futur Festival
I didn’t eat any food at the Kappa Futur Festival but I will say that there were lots of options to keep you fueled if you were feeling hungry. As you can see in the photo above the food court area had vendors selling poke bowls, kebabs, fries, chicken nuggets, pizza, sandwiches and hamburgers (and I’m sure there were more options too).
I’m a vegetarian and I definitely would have been able to eat some of the food; vegans I’m sure would have found one or two choices as well.
I also snapped a photo of the drink prices. I had a paloma or two on both days I visited the festival, plus lots of water. The only water sold was in plastic bottles, and there were stations with free potable water (or even places to pay to refill your bottle). Even when the drink queue looked long it moved quite quickly and the bartenders were very friendly. The drink sizes were fairly large and they were served in plastic cups.
⭐ Bring an extra water bottle lid (or two) in your bag because they won’t give you the lid for any water bottles you buy. If you have your own lid you can seal your bottle for your safety and so that it doesn’t go to waste. ⭐
Plastic Waste at Kappa Futur Festival
Speaking of plastic cups, I do have to talk about the amount of trash that was generated at this festival. I was shocked by all the garbage that accumulated on the ground – everywhere looked like the photo above. Recycling bins were poorly marked and both recycling and garbage bins were already overflowing by early afternoon. Obviously they need way more bins and they need to empty them more often, but I’d like to see the festival take further steps to reduce plastic waste. Their Instagram talks about sustainability and environmentalism but that wasn’t reflected in my experience.
The Music
Kappa Future Festival had five stages accessible to everyone, plus one smaller stage in the VIP area (apparently – I didn’t actually see it?).
The biggest and most famous DJs performed on the Futur Stage, and quite a few recognizable names were also on the Voyager Stage. The other three stages featured up-and-coming artists and other performers who hadn’t yet obtained wide recognition. The sound quality on the main stage was good, though it was clear that the proximity of some of the other stages meant that you had to be at the front to avoid hearing different sets mixed together (I remember reading in the one of the chats on the app that people noticed a lot of sound issues were sorted by the second day).
For me, the sets that I enjoyed the most were Purple Disco Machine (I’ll be going to another one of his shows in Germany this summer), Hugel, Blond:ish and Lost Frequencies. I’d been looking forward to Vintage Culture too, but found his set leaned more in the “techno” direction than in the “house” direction that initially drew me to his music.
The Atmosphere
I really liked being at Kappa Futur Festival in the afternoon and early evening, when it was significantly less crowded. The atmosphere earlier in the day was very chill and relaxed, and people seemed to be really into the music.
As it got darker the grounds filled with more people; I’m guessing it was locals who worked during the day and came to the festival afterwards. Things got pretty crowded, especially when it started to pour rain and people sought shelter under the covered roof at the main stage. I think that if it hadn’t been so rainy people would have been a lot more relaxed in the sheltered areas.
For me the negatives were big groups of mostly local people in front of the stages standing around, smoking cigarettes and shouting to one another. I would have thought that the expansive festival grounds offered lots of places where you could hang out if you weren’t really into the music, but a lot of people seemed to just want to occupy space that might have been better used by people dancing and enjoying the music.
Kappa Futur Festival seems to pride itself on creating opportunities for EDM music and contemporary art to come together, but I would say that for the average visitor the art side of things is almost unnoticeable. There are some light displays at the stages that sometimes go along with the music, and there were some portraits of festival goers (only the ones in the most dramatic outfits, of course) displayed on large screens, but I think that unless you’re part of the art scene in the lead-up to the festival you won’t notice it much on site.
One thing that is extremely unfortunate is that many European festival-goers are still choosing to dress in indigenous North American regalia as “costumes”. I was quite shocked to see this still happening in 2024 as it is so deeply offensive to the indigenous communities in my country (Canada), who have been begging non-Indigenous to stop using their deeply important cultural regalia as costumes for the last twenty years. You can’t pretend that you’re all “peace, love, unity, respect” when you’re choosing to do something that has been called out as racist for almost the entirety of your life.
Getting Home After KFF
I don’t know if it was just me trying to beat the crowds by leaving early, but I was never able to exit the festival from the same place where I entered. Instead I had to exit on the east side of the park, where the transportation connections were quite limited. On the KFF website it said that they were working with the public transportation system in Turin to run extra service to and from the grounds, but I didn’t see any evidence of that when I was there.
If I hadn’t been alone (and if it hadn’t been raining) I would have walked around the park, back to Piero della Francesca, to catch a bus or tram back to the center. However, because I was alone and it was raining I waited at a sheltered bus stop on Via Orvieto and eventually caught a bus that took me to Porta Susa railway station, where I hopped on one of the last subway trains to my hotel (just off Via Roma) and then walked the last few blocks.
Getting home was one of the biggest inconveniences about Kappa Futur Festival, so below I will recommend a few hotels within a (moderate) walking distance of the festival grounds.
Would I Recommend Kappa Futur Festival?
For me, Kappa Futur Festival was a good introduction to EDM Festivals. I think the total number of attendees was about 80,000, meaning it’s big enough to draw world-class DJs but small enough that even if two artists you love are playing at the same time you can find a way to see them both. I think my three-day pass was a good value at the early bird price but possibly not worth €260 (the regular price if purchased last-minute).
I do think the festival organizers have some work to do in terms of communicating in the lead-up to the festival, and supporting both sustainability and just basic cleanliness on the festival grounds, but hopefully they learned from some of the feedback that I know they received in 2024 and will make Kappa FuturFestival 2026 even better.
And, of course, Turin has always been my favorite city in Italy and anything that attracts new visitors to the city gets a big thumbs up from me. Please, please, please make sure you leave time in your itinerary for some sightseeing in Turin, as it truly rivals other Italian cities like Rome, Venice and Florence, but has only a fraction of the crowds (even during the festival!).
Hotels Near Kappa Futur Festival
I promised that I would share some accommodation options, so I’m adding them here! There aren’t very many hotels within walking distance of Parco Dora, but a few options to consider are:
- B&B Hotel Torino Presidente (I stayed in a B&B branded hotel in Madrid earlier this year and thought it was a great value, so this is where I’d probably try to book first)
- Pacific Hotel Fortino
- Art Hotel Olympic
- Hotel Torino Royal
Alternately, you can stay in the center and take transit to and from the festival. A few of the hotels I like in the center, that have good transportation connections via bus or tram to the festival grounds, and reasonable connections back home afterwards, include:
Book your hotel for the Kappa Futur Festival early; prices go up closer to the event and rooms at highly-rated hotels sell out. There were quite a few people panicking in the group chats in the days before the festival, asking if anyone had a place they could stay because they couldn’t find accommodation so close to the festival.
Hotels With Availability for KFF 2026:
Check the map to see hotels, hostels and apartment rentals that still have availability from July 3th to July 5th, 2025:
You would be crazy not to spend a few days exploring Turin while you’re in the area. Check out these guides:
10 Reasons Turin is Worth Visiting
How to Spend a Long Weekend in Turin
My Favorite Excursion from Turin: Castello di Rivoli
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