Islamabad’s Solis festival crashes and burns with stage collapse & overcrowding

Chaos ensued at Mountain Dew’s Solis Music and Arts Festival in Islamabad on February 15 as a stage collapsed and the festival was shut down midway.

The fourth edition of the EDM festival was held at the Pakistan National Council of Arts. It was supposed to go on till 12am but was shut down around 9:30pm.

Several people were hurt when the VIP stage collapsed mid-show.

i was at #solis festival and was on the vip platform that fell. tragic. hating it here. my knee hurts. calling a lawyer. pic.twitter.com/0Li9HsrJI7

— ???????????????? (@mayazafarr) February 15, 2020

The festival was also marred by allegations of overbooking and tickets being sold under the table when a massive crowd gathered and was refused entry.

Some people say the organisers sold more tickets than they had the capacity while others claimed a rowdy mob attacked the festival. The management posted a picture on Instagram said it had to make the “difficult decision” of stoping the event due to “hundreds of individuals who fought their way through with fake tickets”.

The most expensive tickets were priced at Rs11,000. The cheapest at Rs4,000.

View this post on Instagram

For the 4th edition of Solis Festival, we were really excited to bring the festival back to home grounds- Islamabad. We had to make the difficult decision to stop the event due to hundreds of individuals who fought their way through with fake tickets. This spoiled the night for everyone else that purchased authorized tickets. As always, security and safety is at the utmost priority for our festival attendees, vendors, sponsors and artists. We want all our fans to feel safe and happy at every show, and because of the actions of these individuals we weren’t able to do so. We will be issuing a further statement at a later time, but for now want to thank our fans who purchased real tickets and came to genuinely enjoy the event.

A post shared by Solis Music & Arts Festival (@solisfestival) on Feb 15, 2020 at 11:07am PST

“We will be issuing a further statement at a later time, but for now want to thank our fans who purchased real tickets and came to genuinely enjoy the event,” read the initial statement.

The organisers shut off the music and lights in an effort to get people to leave. Videos surfaced of people in the crowd throwing bottles and other projectiles at the performing DJs.

People also trashed the place, destroying the stage and enclosures.

Very Bad Doston #solis pic.twitter.com/XcmAeiRPtF

— Hamza (@HmzaBilalRashid) February 15, 2020

Phadda During #Solis Musical evening organized by Mountain Dew in Islamabad on 15 February 2020@IslamabadScene @MountainDew @Islaamabad @livemusicblog pic.twitter.com/JmYGTtke77

— Adnan Hameed عدنان حمید (@AdnanHa65560820) February 15, 2020

Some people on Twitter are calling for action, both against the Solis management and against the gatecrashers. They also called for ticket refunds.

The lineup for the show featured Dannic, Mike Williams, Julian Jordan, FDVM and Turhan James.