2016 – 2026
Ten editions in
A hundred and ninety cedis short on the first one and thirty-two thousand people through the gate on the ninth. Here is all of it, the bad years included.
Previously
on Anthem
Anthem 2023
Anthem 2024
Anthem 2025
2016 to 2025
Ten editions,
including the bad ones
2016
A compound off Oxford Street
Eleven bands, two hundred and forty people, one Saturday and a loss of ninety cedis. Every band asked when the next one was.
2017
Two nights, and a generator that failed
Nine hundred through the gate and forty minutes of silence on the Saturday. We bought a second generator before we bought anything else.
2018
The first outdoor site
Moved to a field in Labadi. Yaw Prempeh played his first festival slot to about ninety people and a rainstorm.
2019
Three days for the first time
Four thousand people and the year we started paying every act within ten days, which has held since.
2020
The year there was none
Cancelled in June and refunded in full by July. We spent the autumn recording eleven sets in an empty hall and put them out free.
2021
Back, smaller, outdoors only
Two thousand capped, all outdoors, and the first Palmwine stage — which was only ever meant to be a stopgap.
2022
Black Star Square
The move that changed the festival. Eleven thousand across three days and the first year we broke even.
2023
Half the bill new
The rule became a rule rather than a habit. Twenty of forty slots to acts who had never played a festival.
2024
The Late Room
One room, doors at eleven, no printed lineup. It sold out in nine days and has done every year since.
2025
Thirty-two thousand
The delay towers went in, the sound complaints stopped, and the ninth edition was the first to sell out before the lineup was announced.
10
Editions since 2016
40
Acts on the 2026 bill
32
k
Through the gates last year
210
Crew and stewards on site
Older than the festival
The rhythms
came first
Fontomfrom is a royal ensemble and kpanlogo came off the streets of Ga Mashie in the sixties. Adowa is older than anyone can usefully date. Every one of them is still played every week somewhere in this city, mostly at funerals, mostly by people nobody has ever put on a poster.
Highlife came out of those rhythms meeting brass. Hiplife came out of highlife meeting a drum machine. Afrobeats and drill came next. That line runs unbroken through every stage on this ground, which is why the Drum Circle is free and paid at the same rate as the main stage.
Highlife
Afrobeats
Gospel
Drill
Palmwine
Hiplife
Fontomfrom
Kpanlogo
Highlife
Afrobeats
Gospel
Drill
Palmwine
Hiplife
Fontomfrom
Kpanlogo
We publish
what went wrong
Every February we put out a note covering the year's accounts, the acts we paid and when, the incidents on site and the things we got wrong. It is not required of us and no other festival in this country does it. We started because the year the generator failed we owed people an explanation, and we have not found a good reason to stop.
Kwame Ofosu, festival director
Early-bird passes
close on 30 September
Weekend passes go up by eighty cedis at the end of September and the Late Room sells out every year before the lineup is even announced.
Confirm your place