Summer is back on the Rhine, and so is the KUNST!RASEN. Every year since 2012 the open-air site in Bonn-Gronau, right on the riverbank near the Posttower, turns into one of the region’s biggest stages — and the 2026 season is no different, stacked with names spanning pop, rock, schlager, and everything in between.
We’re only just in 2023 but already more than 40,000 tickets have been sold for this Summer’s Kunst!Rasen Season.
A rundown of the current program:
15.06 Santiano 18.06. Klassik!Rocknacht 19.06. Bon Iver 20.06. Porcupine Tree 24.06. Achtung/Note: No Classic Rocknacht at Kunst!Rasen. Instead E Werk Köln with Billy Gibbons & The Bfg’s! 04.07. One Republic 07.07. Roland Kaiser 08.07.Folk!Picknick 14.07. Simply Red 15.07. Broilers 02.08. Bastille – Neu 04.08. Brings 10.08. Placebo 12.08. Niedeckens BAP
With a couple more shows still to be confirmed so watch this space…
Jan Delay has now added an extra show to his Kunstrasen appearance this year. The top German Rap star follows hot on the heels of a similar ‘double booking’ for Lea and makes me wonder if this could be the new norm for concerts – if you can only have half as many people attending, then do two shows. Anyway, Delay is now scheduled for both 24th and 25th August, 7pm Kunstrasen.
There are few musicians in the German pop landscape who can boast a career as rich in surprises as Jan Delay.
He draws from five decades of (black) pop history, but plays just in the here and now. In him are Daft Punk and Drake, Burna Boy and Stefflon Don, Sly & Robbie and Meek Mill. Jan Delay and his terrific band play with disco, trap, funk, afrobeats, ska, arena techno, reggea, rock, soul …. as only free spirits like Jan Delay & Disko No.1 can do.
Jan Delay has always been a popstar by conviction. Never shying away from the big melodies and moments, rather embracing and celebrating them and bringing them into his own cosmos. Only the obvious has never interested him. On the contrary, it is precisely the small breaks and apparent contradictions in his music and artistic personality that have made him relevant over three decades, a period of time that is incomprehensible by hip-hop standards: from the Rote Flora to “Grün Weiße Liebe” to features with Hafti and Tretti. He still takes the political personally almost 30 years after “K.E.I.N.E”.
The fact that he always gets away with it, however, is not only due to his unerring rhyme art and his fine sense for crisp slogans, nor to the trademark of his unique singing voice, but above all to a hard-won fact: There is simply no better live band in this country than Disko No. 1 and their stylish MC Jan Delay.
Back in the late ’70s, when I was an avid Rock music fan and gig-goer, Britain was rather proud of it’s contribution to the genre. We were competing largely against American bands like Aerosmith, Bon Jovi and mega artists like Springsteen. The real metal-heads though knew there was also another rather excellent source of Metal music – Germany. We really didn’t have a female equivalent to Doro Pesch, Michael Schenker was seemingly both a guitar master and madman but we loved them both – and there was a band, also with a Schenker brother in it – whose name appeared on practically every one of those denim waistcoats festooned with sewn-on patches that I saw. A band called The Scorpions.
Fast forward over forty years and here we are at the closing show of the 2019 Kunstrasen season in Bonn. There are cloth patches for sale at the merchandise table still, to show some things haven’t changed. I still giggle nervously at the thought of these unkempt and motor-oil drenched bikers sitting at home with a needle and thread working on that patched to the hilt jacket. But if the patches haven’t changed, can the Band really be live up to a legendary name from the ’70s at 70? Interested to know the answer? I was too, so let’s pick up a pair of free magenta ear-plugs from the Telekom booth and find out (where were they when I saw Sammy Hagar in 1978?!)
I’m a firm believer that Brighton might well be the secret cradle of modern UK pop music. Hitchin born James Bay cut his musical teeth in the bars of that very UK seaside town at open-mikes. Now he’s heavily touted as a future Rockstar and warming up audiences for The Stones and Ed Sheeran. His appearance, along with that of this year’s Eurovision winner Duncan Laurence, made a visit to Kunstrasen on Thursday too good to resist.
Forty years ago, I would quite possibly have considered walking over broken glass to get to a double concert featuring Dire Straits and Supertramp. That was then of course, and this is now: For Dire Straits tonight, read bassist and co-founder John Illsley. For Supertramp read Co-founder, writer, arranger and singer Roger Hodgson. Maybe not Dire Straits and Supertramp then at Kunst!Rasen – but certainly, for the latter at least, worth walking over broken glass whilst wearing sturdy shoes. In the event, no broken glass, just very dry grass was underfoot for the penultimate concert by the Rhine in 2018.
Following their Karlsruhe show this week, the band’s website suggested that Simple Minds were raring to hit the Bonn Kunst!Rasen stage: “After a two-day break we are more than refreshed and very much looking forward to performing live in BONN tonight.” Singer and co-founder Jim Kerr will be 60 next year but is not living off of past hits as a well oiled but power-packed show proved. UK veterans Fischer-Z were also on good form to start a very hot and humid evening of good Rock music by the Rhine.
There are little photos on her in-ear monitors, alphabet letters are on her earrings, she’s rushing from stage side to stage side all the time. It’s very difficult to concentrate on Alanis Morissette as she makes her first ever appearance on the Kunst!Rasen stage. Easier to just close your eyes and let some of the best song lyrics of the 90’s wash over you.
