Christopher BarrettOn the back of Europe’s first major K-pop festival, which saw more than 70,000 attend Frankfurt’s Kpop.Flex (pictured) last weekend, the event is to be rolled out at London’s The O2 arena from 22 – 24 September 2023.
The London festival is expected to attract 50,000 fans of the genre, and include performances from some of the world’s most successful K-pop acts. It will also feature a K-Pop awards show.
The three-day event will take place in the arena, within indigo at The O2, and use a range of other locations across the campus, with the aim of enabling fans to immerse themselves in Korean culture.
The line-up is yet to be announced but the Frankfurt event featured Korean pop acts including EXO’s Kai, Monsta X, ENHYPEN, NCT Dream and Mamamoo.
The inaugural Kpop.Flex Awards For Emerging Artists will take place on 23 September.
The event is being staged by Kpop Europa, in partnership with promoter PK Events. Kpop Europa is a joint venture between UK-based Live Company Group and Explorado Group.
The Live Company Group was founded by David Ciclitira, who has been involved in promoting K-Pop concerts and art shows throughout Asia for the past 10 years. A former deputy MD of Sky TV, he founded the Parallel Media Group in 1998, has been heavily involved in global sporting events and was behind Live Nation joint venture Live Nation Marketing Partnership Asia Limited that raised funding for Tokyo’s annual Electronic Daisy Carnival festival.
He said, “We’re delighted to be working with The O2 to deliver three incredible days celebrating K-pop to fans across the UK and beyond. We are super excited about the first edition of the International Kpop.Flex Awards, which will showcase the very best talents of the K-pop world.”
The O2 arena VP and GM Steve Sayer said, “In recent years, K-pop has taken the world by storm and so this is a huge milestone for us. We can’t wait to build on the success of previous hugely popular K-pop performances at the venue, and welcome some of the world’s top K-Pop acts and their legions of fans to The O2 for a fantastic weekend festival event that will take over the full campus at The O2.”
The event will return to Frankfurt next year with a festival at Deutsche Bank Park Stadium, from 17-18 June.