Sold Out! Messe Karlsruhe ehrt Knock Out Festival
15 festival editions, completely sold out again in 2024
A real success story: Since 2005, the Knock Out Festival has been providing a special kind of musical pre-Christmas program. Every year in December, metalheads make the pilgrimage to the largest indoor festival in southern Germany in Karlsruhe to get into the mood for the festive season with loud music, headbanging and air guitar solos. Once again this year, the historic Schwarzwaldhalle was transformed into a festival for heavy metal fans. Six bands, including legends such as Blind Guardian, Kissin' Dynamite and GammaRay, really fired up the 4,500 fans. At the end of November, the organizers announced that the festival was once again completely sold out – and now Messe Karlsruhe is paying tribute to this success story with a symbolic “Sold Out Award”.
“The Knock Out Festival is one of our very special highlights every year – not only for metal fans, but also for our colleagues, who bring the Schwarzwaldhalle to life with a lot of passion and professionalism for an unforgettable festival evening. Together with the organizer Bottom Row, we have already experienced legendary concerts with real greats of the metal scene. We congratulate the Knock Out Festival on its 15th edition in Karlsruhe and wish it many more successful years with sold-out tickets, numerous music legends and happy fans,” says Holger Klanfer, Director Congress & Cultural Event at Messe Karlsruhe.
“We are proud to have established the Knockout Festival in the metal scene. The event is well known to metal fans far beyond the borders of Germany, and we now sell many tickets even before we have announced the first band. This confirms that we are on the right track, but for us it is both a compliment and an incentive. Last but not least, it is the constructive cooperation with the Karlsruhe Trade Fair team that allows us to tackle innovations every year in order to continuously improve the festival experience for our guests,” says organizer Kosta Zafiriou.
After five events in the Europahalle, the day festival returned to the Schwarzwaldhalle in 2014, where it also premiered in 2005. The Schwarzwaldhalle, with its self-supporting suspended roof made of prestressed concrete in the inner-city congress center, which has also hosted the Bambi awards, pompous ball nights or career fairs, is the ideal stage for festivals like Knock Out. With its column-free oval, it exudes the special charm of a cultural monument and at the same time ensures excellent sound quality thanks to its special acoustic ceiling.
