The 2025 Electric Picnic is set to be the biggest event in the music festival’s 22 year history.
This follows EP Republic Ltd, the company behind the annual three day festival at Stradbally Hall Estate at Stradbally in Co Laois, confirming that it intends to seek permission from Laois Co Council to increase the numbers attending each day to 80,000.
This is a 5,000 increase on the 75,000 tickets that were sold for the 2024 event.
Tickets for the 2025 EP event went on sale on August 21 last and sold out within hours without any act confirmed at the time.
Now, in a statutory public notice, EP Republic has confirmed that it is applying to Laois Co Council for a licence to hold the outdoor musical event under Part XV1 of the Planning and Development Act 2000.
The notice states that “the anticipated number of audience attending the event is 80,000 people each day”.
This year’s event returns to the traditional last weekend of August where it will run from Thursday, August 28 to Sunday, August 31.
The notice also states that “early entry camping will be open to a maximum of 40,000 people from Thursday 28 of August at 2pm to Monday, September 1 at 4pm”.
The first Electric Picnic was staged on Saturday, September 4th 2004 when around 10,000 people attended.
At the conclusion of last August’s event, promoter of Electric Picnic, Melvyn Benn hinted at the planned increase for the 2025 event.
Mr Benn said he intended to talk to Laois County Council about the possibility of increasing capacity, but is “quite happy with where we are right now”.
He added at the time: “It’s up the council to see if there is more room”.
The sale of 80,000 tickets would guarantee the promoters a box office of €18m at the loyalty scheme price of €225 per weekend camping ticket.
The most recent accounts for EP Republic Ltd show that Dermot Kennedy, Fred Again and Picture This helped the operator of Electric Picnic to post tax profits of €1.56m in 2023
EP Republic Ltd recorded post tax profits of €1.56m for the 16 months to the end of April 2023 and followed Covid-19 related losses of €336,446 in 2021.
The company made the profits on the back of a then record 70,000 music fans attending the 2022 event at Stradbally in Co Laois.
Those headlining the event in 2022 included Snow Patrol, Arctic Monkeys and Dermot Kennedy while Fred Again, Fontaines DC and Anne-Marie also featured.
The accounts show that the company in 2023 paid out dividends of €7m to its Irish parent firm and Denis Desmond’s MCD joint venture with Live Nation, Live Nation Gaiety Ireland Holdings Ltd.
EP Republic Ltd have to lodge the licence application for the 2025 event over the next two weeks with the Council and after receipt of the application, members of the public have three weeks in which to make submissions.
Reporting by Gordon Deegan
