In October 2025, the three men who spent 31 years building Sónar into Europe’s most respected electronic music festival quietly walked away. Enric Palau, Ricard Robles, and Sergio Caballero issued vague statements about feeling “grateful” before disappearing entirely. What they didn’t say was louder: the institution they created was no longer theirs to control. 1
The timing wasn’t accidental. Three weeks earlier, over 70 artists had withdrawn from the same festival, refusing to perform on a stage now entangled with KKR, a $530 billion investment firm whose portfolio included weapons manufacturers and Israeli defense companies. Sama Abdulhadi, a Palestinian DJ, announced she wouldn’t touch any KKR-affiliated event. Collectives canceled. The BDS movement called for boycott. By May 2025, Sónar had become a flashpoint in something far larger than music.
The founders couldn’t defend the institution anymore. So they left.
What Actually Happened
The disaster began in 2018. Palau, Robles, and Caballero sold controlling interest to Superstruct Entertainment, promising they’d maintain creative control and preserve Sónar’s legacy. It was supposed to be a graceful succession. In 2024, KKR acquired Superstruct—suddenly controlling 80+ festivals worldwide. The founders discovered their life’s work now operated within a capital structure explicitly designed to maximize returns from weapons manufacturing and fossil fuel infrastructure.
For a festival that defined itself through countercultural opposition to mainstream power, the contradiction was suffocating. By October, they surrendered.
First Floor reported that during June’s festival, Palau told a journalist he didn’t think Sónar “deserved all the criticism.” This wasn’t someone peacefully handing over keys. This was someone recognizing he was trapped. 2
One Reddit user captured what everyone understood: “Never let anyone tell you boycotting doesn’t work.”
Sónar’s Founders Just Walked Away: How a 30-Year Barcelona Legacy Got Caught in the KKR Controversy
The Restructuring
Within weeks of the founders’ departure, new CEO François Jozic announced something radical: consolidate everything into one venue.
For 32 years, Sónar operated split venues—Fira Montjuïc for daytime (workshops, art installations, discovery programming) and Fira Gran Via for nighttime (clubs, pure dancefloor intensity). The model worked. 3
Starting June 18–20, 2026, it all happens at Gran Via. Six stages running continuously. “Non-stop music throughout the afternoon and night,” management promised.
The logic is obvious to anyone who understands private equity: one venue means lower overhead, standardized operations, cleaner financial metrics, predictable investor returns. It has nothing to do with artistic innovation. 4
What Reddit Actually Thinks
User Prudent-Experience30 commented positively: “I’m definitely going, whether solo or with company.” Easier logistics matter for attendance decisions, especially for casual attendees. 5
But veteran attendee Efficient_Tear8142, returning after a decade away, found institutional transformation unsettling: “It has transformed into a major commercial enterprise, with less emphasis on innovative music. It’s disappointing, and sadly, I don’t plan to return.”
User mental_issues_ reported enjoying 2025 daytime activities but found the evening program monotonous: “The Sonar club stage gave the impression that all the artists were presenting a similar hard techno track, which made it less engaging.” Consolidation could intensify that homogenization.
The most direct concern came from Reddit user asking openly: “Is Fira Gran Via good during daytime? Is it good with only one location all day?” It went unanswered. User gareth_fr expanded on this: “I truly appreciated about Sonar was the opportunity to have a pause between daytime and nighttime activities… it seems that won’t be feasible.”
Community feedback split between logistical pragmatism and artistic skepticism. One user noted the KKR ownership issue directly: “I won’t be attending, largely due to KKR’s involvement in actions I consider to be genocidal.”
The Broader Pattern
This isn’t unique to Sónar. Multi-venue European festivals have gradually consolidated as private equity absorbed them. Consolidation simplifies attendee experience while concentrating artistic identity. It also concentrates profit extraction.
Festivals that consolidate historically become less willing to take programming risks. Operational efficiency rarely correlates with artistic innovation. Usually it correlates with standardization.
What This Actually Means
The electronic music community watched Sónar’s founders build something remarkable—a reference point for balancing cutting-edge curation with commercial viability, experimentation with accessibility. Then the founders sold to private equity. Everything that followed was inevitable.
When investor returns contradict institutional values, the values lose. It’s never even close.
By October, the founders paid the price. Not financially—the 2018 sale left them wealthy. But the institution they spent their lives building dissolved into machinery they couldn’t control and couldn’t defend.
Now it’s restructured by leadership with no obligation to remember what made Sónar matter. Jozic answers to Superstruct, which answers to KKR, which answers to investors. Artistic innovation doesn’t appear in those metrics. Institutional loyalty doesn’t either.
The Bottom Line
Sónar 2026 represents institutional transition within uncertainty. Logistically, single-venue solves the venue-hopping problem. Symbolically, it signals reset under new leadership navigating unprecedented backlash.
But real questions remain: Will unified space generate artistic cross-pollination or narrow Sónar’s aesthetic range? Will Sónar+D maintain its professional identity under consolidated model?
Presale opens June 17, 2026 at sonar.es. But one thing’s clear—the Sónar that Palau, Robles, and Caballero built no longer exists. What replaces it will be restructured by private equity logic that saw a legendary institution and thought: “How do we make this more profitable?”
The community is watching.
- https://www.catalannews.com/culture/item/sonar-unveils-single-venue-format-merging-day-and-night-shows ↩︎
- https://mixmagnl.com/read/sonar-2025-draws-161-000-attendees-and-announces-major-format-change-for-2026-news ↩︎
- https://voyeglobal.com/sonar-festival-guide/ ↩︎
- https://www.facebook.com/catalannews/posts/%EF%B8%8F-s%C3%B3nar-unveils-single-venue-format-merging-day-and-night-showsnew-management-of/1264371852380849/ ↩︎
- https://www.reddit.com/r/SonarFestival/comments/1onl8jd/did_you_notice_only_one_venue_for_2026/ ↩︎
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