MDL Beast, the largest music, arts and culture festival Saudi Arabia has ever hosted, attracted more than 130,000 fans on day one on Thursday, organisers have revealed.
Crowds gathered at Saudi Arabia’s first ever multi stage music festival to watch global music superstars including Tiësto, Martin Garrix, Black Coffee, Swizz Beatz and Rick Ross plus local talent Cosmicat, DJ Baloo, Dish Dash and Simi Haze.
The Main Stage was opened by Simi Haze, the Saudi-born identical twin DJs who have been taking the fashion and music worlds by storm and have now returned to their home country to perform at MDL Beast.
The 45,000 person capacity Big Beast stage is the biggest built in the world this year.
In the Underground Beast district, visitors saw 19 acts over three stages made from containers all decorated by local graffiti artists.
Artists including Cosmicat and Vinyl Mode took to the stage on Thursday.
Cosmicat said: “This is the biggest music festival in the region, here in Saudi Arabia, we have never had a music festival before, and now we are doing it big It’s not just the first, it’s the largest and we are expecting probably over 200,000 people so it really is pretty big.”
The retail therapy district, MDL Town and Saudi Alley local food court, welcomed chefs from all over the world who created bespoke menus and mocktails especially for the event.
On day 1, 22 shows were also put on by performers in the Arts Beast district.
John Rash, creative director, MDL Beast Festival said: “We are so proud of what we have been able to do here today and that we can showcase Saudi Arabia’s potential for more large-scale events like this in the future. MDL Beast will create a new, unique genre of international festivals going forwards.”
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