“I have been waiting to play this festival for a whole f*cking year,” Alana Haim told the crowd at Primavera Sound Barcelona 2025 on the first day of the festival. “Every single time we play Primavera Sound y’all show the f*ck up.” It's a sentiment many artists share, but it feels even truer this year. Ever since the festival announced Charli XCX, Sabrina Carpenter, and Chappell Roan — a.k.a. The PowerPuff Girls of pop — as its main headliners this year, anticipation has been stacking up.
Alone, it makes sense for pop stars of that caliber to book the main spot at a festival as renowned as Primavera, but bringing them together for an all-women top bill makes the feat all the more remarkable.
“We had Charli last year when brat wasn't even released, but the whole plan was always to try to get her to begin and end officially her brat year [at Primavera],” Marta Pallarès, head of press and corporate relations at Primavera Sound, tells Teen Vogue on the grounds in Barcelona. “In 2024, she was on the Amazon Music stage presenting the [album’s] songs. We knew that she would come back on one of the main stages.”
Booking Sabrina Carpenter, Pallarès says, was “a no-brainer.” She adds: “She has this kind of quirkiness in her, she's a pop diva. We felt that she would be a good fit for Primavera, and that it wouldn't be just your [average] commercial music. She's incredibly fun. She's so talented and so smart.”
With two out of three spots confirmed, all eyes were on Chappell Roan, and it was precisely the fact that the former were already involved that made the Midwest Princess “come out of retirement” and accept the festival’s offer.
“Our head of booking and one of the directors of the festival said, ‘I don't care. I just want her. We need to have her do whatever you need to do. If you have to go to Norway and get on a boat with fishermen and go to the island where she's staying, you do that,’” Pallarès adds. “In the end, it wasn’t Norway, but it was London. Two of my colleagues from the booking department went there and spoke with her and told her that we had Sabrina and Charli. You can't tell us you won't be there. And then she said, ‘Okay, you know what? Yeah, I'm gonna do it.’ We are really, really, really blessed with the three of them.”
Pallarès boils it down to a matter of “luck, trust, confidence, and stubbornness,” but looking closely, it’s Primavera’s long-standing commitment to showcase diverse artists that made the feat not only happen but also feel like a perfect, natural fit.
Back in 2018, Primavera Sound put out a pledge to make their lineups “gender-balanced” — not because they felt like their roster needed it, but to set a precedent for male-dominated festivals elsewhere. Their headliners in 2025 are without a doubt the pinnacle.
“The [biggest] lesson [we have] learned [since launching the pledge] is it can be done and it can be done consistently,” Pallarès says, emphasizing it needs to be more than just for optics. “ [Some may be like] ‘You know what, I'm gonna put all my effort and I can deal with a bad edition if I just wanna do a PR stunt. These women are not talented enough, but I will do it for one edition, and then I'm gonna forget about it. No. You can do it every single year, delivering the best lineups and selling out your festival.”
“The people are so incredibly excited about [our lineups],” Pallarès continues. “We’ve been talking about this same topic since 2019, so the lesson is that it can be done, and it shouldn't be so difficult. Moving forward, what I always say is that I would love to not speak about this topic anymore because it's just normal. If diversity is so embedded in our playlist, if it's at the Grammys, then why not on stage?”
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Charli XCX enlisted the help of Troye Sivan, who was ringing in his 30th the day of the show, for the very first European edition of their SWEAT tour, and the crowd lived up to the performance’s name, tirelessly jumping around on command. They also had Chappell Roan as a special guest to do the “Apple” dance.
Sabrina Carpenter followed suit on Friday with an all-new show of her own, where she debuted her new single “Manchild” live for the first time, and Chappell Roan closed out headlining duties on Saturday with her very own fantasy castle part of her new Visions of Damsels & Other Dangerous Things tour, which included a performance of still-unreleased track “The Subway” as well as a cover of Heart's “Barracuda" and a group workout session to the tune of “Hot To Go!”
“I was on the verge of tears multiple times on stage,” Roan later reflected on her Instagram. “It was so spectacular to visit and such an electric crowd. Y’all made me feel so special. I will never forget this. One of my favorite shows evaaaa.”
Though Charli XCX, Sabrina Carpenter, and Chappell Roan might have dominated headlines, other acts also made this edition of Primavera unforgettable, and that is the festival’s aim from the get-go. “Something that I always like to mention is that we are one of the very few festivals that release the lineup as a whole. We don't do batches. We understand that the lineup makes sense when you see the whole,” Pallarès explains.
“The small print matters a lot. It's really important for us to have, apart from the Holy Trinity of Pop, acts like Turnstile, Idles, Fontaines D.C., who had one of the best records last year,” Pallarès adds, ”having them back to back with Chappell at the main stages is just unbelievable. It's really so fulfilling.”
Related: See What People Wore to Primavera Sound Barcelona 2025
Yes, main stages in plural, because Primavera Sound is notorious for its dual main stage, which cuts down waiting times between sets significantly for festival-goers. “The side-by-side stages are completely unique to Primavera,” says Mish Mayer, head of video studios at Amazon Music, which has been responsible for livestreaming the festival to local and global audiences for the past three years. (Amazon Music has had a partnership with Primavera for four years.)
“As a fan experience, it’s incredible,” Mayer adds. “I've never seen a lineup like that. You are getting artist after artist after artist [both on site and] on the live stream in a way that, from a programming perspective and when we are scheduling, we can’t choose. They've got four stages, and all those stages are completely packed with incredible artists. From a production and tech perspective, like it's just second to none in terms of how they deliver it. On that level, it just feels like such a special festival.”
Even in those secondary stages and time slots, women also shone bright this year — and if Primavera Sound proves anything, it is that anyone can nab the top spot the following year. (Not only did Charli XCX go from the Amazon Music stage to the main Estrella Damn stage in a year, but Rosalía also went from the Pull&Bear stage in 2019 to the main stage as a headliner in 2023.)
This year, artists like FKA Twigs, HAIM, Judeline, and beabadoobee were standouts both before headliners and in the early slots of the main stages, pulling considerable crowds in the early hours of the festival despite Barcelona’s scorching sun.
“Judeline [is one of the emerging talents] I’ll bet on,” Claire Imoucha, head of Amazon Music Spain, tells Teen Vogue. “She's not small, but I think that she has a really bright future [ahead of her.] Her proposal is really interesting, and I really have good faith. She is just what she has to be.”
Kirdis Postelle, global head of content and artist marketing at Amazon Music, agrees. “I was at an event yesterday where she performed, and it was a very small set, just her and a guitar player, and I really loved her. I just remember doing those exact same kinds of performances with Dua Lipa and I was just like, ‘This girl's got it. She's gonna be special.’”
As far as international talent goes, Irish singer-songwriter CMAT pulled one of the biggest crowds to the Cupra stage on day one of the festival. The country-pop star put on a show comprising new and old songs, jumping from every corner of the stage while interacting with the crowd and belting high notes.
“CMAT was one of our artists to watch in the UK, and [seeing her on stage was incredible],” Mayer says. “I'm really proud of the work we do as Amazon Music in terms of championing breakthrough artists and seeing that journey to a Primavera main stage. Our Artists to Watch program is not just a flash in the pan. It's an 18-month sustained support, and they show up in different ways through our programming, so it feels like a really proud moment to be part of that story and then see her on the stage and us to be streaming her show on our channel.”
Another Cupra standout, also pulling crowds from far and wide, was Spanish rising artist Amaia, who put on a sentimental show right before Chappell Roan’s spot, complete with a complete orchestra, choir, as well as live harp and piano. The star took more than one chance to interact and bounce off energy from the highly energetic crowd with impromptu conversations, even posing for a photo mid-sentence.
Amaia, an alum of musical television contest Operación Triunfo, performed most songs from her latest album, Si Abro Los Ojos No Es Real, as well as older gems like “Yamaguchi” and “Bienvenidos al Show,” as well as a belted piano cover of Papá Levanté’s beloved track “Me Pongo Colorada.” The highs and lows of her set were palpable, with attendees bouncing around during one song and being brought to tears in the next one.
Other highlights included co-ed acts like Confidence Man, YOASOBI, Magdalena Bay, and Wolf Alice, the latter a replacement for Clairo, who performed at Gov Ball NYC instead. With 14 stages and over 220 shows across the three main days, Primavera Sound 2025 attracted 290,000 attendees from 136 countries, with even more people tuning in from home from the livestream.
“Why this festival? Because it's one of the most important in the world. It has year after year an amazing lineup, a diverse lineup and an amazing discovery approach of the music, which is very much in line with our DNA. We speak the same language and have the same object,” Imoucha says. That object is amplifying emerging talent, with the right balance of “headliners who are big stars” and “the discovery of local, regional, and international acts.”
“Everything we do is global. We want to be able to bring artists of all [calibers to the forefront] — mid-size headliners, developing, whatever it is — to a global stage and that's what fans want,” Mayer adds. “Discovery is such a big part of music. being able to watch [a set] or a live stream and just be like, I didn't hear about this artist, but this is great. we make sure that we are available globally so you can tune in from wherever. I just imagine people dancing in their kitchens and their living rooms to the sets. That's all that keeps us going.”
When Primavera Sound was first born, the founders envisioned a festival that would bring to Barcelona the artists that they couldn't see here, Pallarès adds. “Back then, it was The Pixies and Sonic Youth. Right now, it is Chappell Roan. But it's still the same [sentiment]. These artists will come to Barcelona to our festival and not anywhere else.”
“I would also like people to keep in mind that, of course, it's about music, but we also deeply care about everything that revolves around it. It's diversity, but not only in gender, but also being incredibly inclusive and proud of our LGBTQ+ community, who come year after year to enjoy a pre-Pride party at the festival,” she adds. “When we create the festival, we want to create a little… I don't wanna say a utopia, because a utopia is something that can't exist, but it's just something that kind of condenses everything that is good out there in our society."
"You live only in the good for three days. People are happy where people are in community, where people are enjoying each other, and you have good food, and you have good weather, and you have good views, and everybody's beautiful and their own way. I think that's what the festival is for. We want to be in that year after year.”
