Portals Festival has announced the stage splits for its 2025 edition. The festival will be returning to London this year at EartH, Hackney from April 24 – 25, bringing a powerful lineup of progressive, post-rock and math-rock artists.
The lineup has been split into three separate stages – the Hall, the Theatre, and The Bar. On the official Portals website, they describe the different settings within the Hackney event space: “This stunning venue includes the large Hall space for the biggest artists with state-of-the-art sound and lighting, a breathtaking converted Theatre for expansive and visually striking artists, and the intimate Bar stage for exciting up-and-coming artists.”
The festival announced a second wave of acts in November, including the likes of French math-rock group Totorro and Chinese post-punkers Fazi, already joining experimental rockers such as Brontide, Mouse On The Keys and Cats and Cats and Cats. Now, they have confirmed their two headliners – with Missouri group FOXING joining for the Saturday, and alt-rock fusion artist Julie Christmas taking the top slot on Sunday, in an exclusive UK performance.
Upon sharing the stage splits, the festival reminded concert goers to remember that “the Hall never clashes with either of the other stages.” – so only the Theatre and the Bar stages will be running at the same time.
The festival started out as a one-day event in 2018 at The Dome & Boston Music Room in Tufnell Park, North London. Since then, it has become one of the most significant showcases of post rock, math rock and underground contemporary UK music. Some past performers include Mono, If These Trees Could Talk, Lite, Bossk and ASIWYFA, who will be returning to the stage at this years edition.
In an Insta post, the festival shared their excitement for the return of ASIWYFA, aka As I Watched You From Afar: “We’re over the moon to have one of our all time favourites back again, after their stunning headline performance at our ’23 edition. They will again play a headline length set. You know you want it.
This time they are fresh off their incredible 2024 album ‘Megafauna’ which received glowing reviews and is a triumphant collection of music that draws influences from across the band’s 20 years career.”
The festival also previewed headliner Julie Christmas, her most recent release and her current band on their official website: ‘Ridiculous and Full of Blood’, a heart-on-sleeve chapter-by-chapter storybook of the conflicting elements of her own character, is the most comprehensive declaration of this musician’s talents yet, spanning from alt-pop to post-metal with a staggering array of talent onboard. Guitarist/ vocalist Johannes Persson (Cult of Luna), drummer Chris Enriquez (Spotlights), bassist/ producer Andrew Schneider, guitarist John LaMacchia (Candiria) and keyboardist extraordinaire Tom Tierney were all paramount in bringing these new, genre-smashing tunes to life.
All lineup details, event information and tickets can be found on the Portals Website, here.
