HISTORY
Oxegen is an annual Irish music festival held since 2004, sponsored by Heineken. Now Ireland's biggest festival and the largest 100% Carbon Neutral event in Ireland, it was previously called Witnness, which ran from 2000 and was sponsored by Guinness.
The event is promoted by MCD, Oxegen was originally a three-day festival but for 2008 was expanded to four days. It takes place at the Punchestown Racecourse in County Kildare, Ireland and has an average attendance of around 90,000 a day, with around 80,000 of these camping on site for the duration, and the rest travelling to the site each day.
It takes place on the same weekend as T in the Park in Scotland and shares a very similar line-up each year, although Oxegen is generally regarded as Ireland's version of the world-renowned Glastonbury Festival, with the 2008 festival sharing three of the same headliners as its English counterpart. Oxegen 2009 was heralded as "a marvel of organisation" when compared to the Woodstock Festival held in the United States in 1969
The original festival, Witnness, sponsored by Guinness, took place during the start of August with notable headliners, including Oasis, The Foo Fighters and Green Day; however in its second and third year, running changed its dates to the second weekend of July. Oxegen became a three-day festival in 2008.
Each Oxegen has been defined by the attention focused on its own weather, with The Belfast Telegraph referring to 2005 as "the sunny one", 2006 as "the torrentially rainy one", 2007 as "the muddy one" and 2008 as "the so-so one"
Oxegen Festival Line UP - 2011
The Black Eyed Peas, The Script, The Strokes, My Chemical Romance, Swedish House Mafia, Tinie Tempah, Weezer, Leftfield, Calvin Harris, Glasvegas, Sawdoctors, Example, House Of Pain, Tiga, All Time Low, Sven Vath, Fun Lovin’ Criminals, Ndubz, Noah & The Whale, Cherri Bomb, The Naked & Famous, Metronomy, Madisun, Her Majesy & The Wolves, Foo Fighters, Arctic Monkeys, Paolo Nutini, Brandon Flowers, deadmau5, Beady Eye, Plan B, Two Door Cinema Club, Imelda May, Bruno Mars, Jessie J, Eels, The Vaccines, Professor Green, Peter Doherty, The Bloody Beetroots, Hurts, Mona, Airbourne Toxic Event, Big Country, The Pretty Reckless, Eliza Doolittle, Miles Kane, City Colour, The Minutes, Frankie & The Heartstrings, Consumer Love Affair, Coldplay, Beyoncé , The National , Slash , Pendulum , Primal Scream playing ‘Screamadelica’, Manic Street Preachers, Jimmy Eat World , OFWGKTA, Ke$Ha, Friendly Fires, Bright Eyes, The Saturdays, Crystal Castles, Ocean Colour Scene, Chase And Status, Afrojack, Fight Like Apes, Ryan Sheridan, Jenny And Johnny, Royseven, Brother, Bipolar Empire