ROCKSTADT Ștefan Zaharescu

How you build Eastern Europe’s biggest metal festival out of a bar, a beer, and a dream even you believed impossible.

It started in a bar in Brașov, with a handful of people and a shared love of music. Today, Rockstadt Extreme Fest is the biggest metal festival in Eastern Europe over 100 bands across three stages, nearly half the crowd arriving with a passport, a cluster of fans from South America who cross an ocean every single year. The Prodigy close the night. Helloween celebrate four decades. And behind the shipping container he turns into an office sits Ștefan Zaharescu, the man who doesn’t book bands he builds belonging. We spoke about the dream even he believed impossible, the Balkan solutions to problems the West can’t even see, and the 16-year-old kid who will, one day, take it all over.

THE INTERVIEW

01

You’ve said it yourself “extreme” isn’t a musical genre. So what is it? Show it to me without using the word “metal.”

I think it’s a necessity in relation to what we call conventional whether we’re talking about culture, music, or art of any kind. Art moves through distinct historical stages. There’s a moment when the audience drifts toward the conventional, toward mass art. Then there’s a moment when that same audience wants a way out, a non-conventional, experimental approach. That’s where a barrier breaks maybe a new genre is born, different styles fuse into a new subgenre.

You find the same pattern in social classes, in the political system, in countless other branches of civilization. History has proven it. That’s the beauty of culture, of art. For me, that’s what extreme means. Rebellion against the conventional, revolt, the tearing down of conventional barriers. And what’s more extreme in music than metal a music that has found its place even inside genres usually sitting at the opposite pole?

A bar, a few friends, a beer. What’s the exact moment in 2013 when you felt this thing was going to be bigger than all of you?

I think it was the moment we woke up with Gojira confirmed overnight. It was 2013, and back then we were a handful of people, mostly just fans of the music. We had no idea what a festival meant or what organizing an open-air event involved. About six months before the event, I tried my luck and got in touch with Gojira’s management. I sent an offer I’d honestly forgotten about I didn’t give it much weight, because I didn’t expect them to be interested in Romania. At that time Gojira were just exploding onto the European scene, one of the most emergent names, and bands like that usually only visited our country long after the peak of their fame. Proof of that is that back then only a handful of bands were touring through Romania.

Three weeks before the festival, we got the show confirmed. After we announced it and I saw the reactions online, I started to understand there was a chance this event could follow the path we’d set for it. Only a few years later did I realize Rockstadt has a heart of its own, and the audience is the catalyst. It grew incredibly organically and naturally, without being pushed. We, the people behind the scenes, were only the binding agent that allowed it to exist. From there on, the audience is the one responsible.

Over 12,000 people a day. What do you see from the sidelines what do they feel down there that no statistic ever captures?

The best example I can give is from last year. The day after the festival, I was already working on offers, confirmations, and logistics for this year’s edition. It’s like that every year there’s an entire logistical process behind the scenes that often involves spreadsheets, tables, budgets, logistics, difficult negotiations, and a mountain of painstaking details and plans you probably wouldn’t associate with an event like this. Unfortunately for me, I spend most of my time during the festival in a shipping container I turn into an office.

Usually I manage to catch at least part of the headliners’ shows. When I see the joy of everyone in the crowd, I realize all of the team’s effort is worth it. All the stress, all the sleepless nights, all the plans and challenges. I wouldn’t say it’s a job for everyone organizing a festival, especially one you make first and foremost out of love for the music, involves serious personal sacrifice. But every effort is measured in the joy and emotion of the people in the crowd.

You moved the festival from Monday to Friday to slot into Europe’s touring circuit, so you wouldn’t have to fight the big players over weekends. Where does that kind of thinking come from how do you end up solving a problem others don’t even see?

I think we in the Balkans, generally, have a particular way of solving problems. It’s a skill people in the West don’t have, and we most likely acquired it as a people precisely through the social and cultural hardship we grew up in or rather the limited resources we had. As Balkan people, we find unorthodox solutions to delicate problems. Beyond that, I think experience also had its say.

This problem wasn’t new to us. Summer being a very crowded period for European festivals of this kind, it was always a challenge to convince bands to come to Romania with their full live production. Not because they wouldn’t want to, but because we’re far from Central and Western Europe. Many times we had to abandon advanced negotiations simply because the distance between two events was too great. So we chewed on it for a few weeks and came up with this particular solution. Let the tours start here in Eastern Europe and then move toward the weekend into Central and Western Europe. And it seems to have worked. From the bands alone, so far we have 40 production trucks and over 40 nightliners. Practically, it’s the most complex live production ever seen at a rock/metal festival in Romania.

Râșnov, 11 years. Now Ghimbav, double the space. What could you finally do here that the old place never let you?

We have a ton of ideas we couldn’t put into practice precisely because of the space limitation. From bar solutions to side activities, chill-out zones, activations, the production side, and so on.

It should be mentioned that the Râșnov site was the same in 2013, when we had under 2,000 people, and in 2025, when we passed the threshold of 10,000 participants a day. Likewise, over the years we came up with all sorts of unusual solutions to make up for the lack of space. And I think 2025 proved to us, to the audience, and to the bands that there’s a limit to that space.

We hope that with this new site we have a whole context to address the problems flagged over these years, and at the same time to rethink what Rockstadt means as a festival.

Behind the Leather. What does the world get completely wrong when it looks at your audience and what’s actually there?

I wouldn’t say anyone got it wrong. But I think we maybe started with a cultural and social handicap left behind by the 1990s, when there were certain labels and preconceptions unfairly placed on the rock community. Some valid, many certainly invalid. Was it wrong? I don’t think we can fairly judge a period of economic and social chaos that seeped into nearly every branch of that generation. We only began to know stability around the early 2000s.

Look, I would have wished people had let go of these preconceptions sooner. To see that behind the person headbanging, the one crowdsurfing, the girl wearing boots and black leather in summer, there are extraordinary people. There are intelligent people, there are doctors, IT professionals, people just like me and you. Nobody’s going off to perform rituals in the forest. Of course, in 2026 we’re talking about a completely different situation. The rock/metal audience has changed too. Now it’s more diverse, the social spread is wider, the scene is more open, and people in general have grown interested in these styles. It’s not a niche audience at all anymore.

I remember over the years we had people you certainly wouldn’t have found at a festival like Rockstadt, who ended up there through various circumstances and told me they never would have imagined they could have such a good time at a festival like this or that they’d end up standing through an entire Obituary concert because they liked what was happening.

Education, you said never forced, all natural. What’s one mindset about Romanian rock that you feel you changed with your own hands?

I think Romanian rock changed on its own, organically. I tell everyone that Romania is a young scene the events industry in Romania only really began its serious journey around 2006. You can’t expect miracles in the span of 20 years. As a country, I think we’ve taken important steps in a relatively short time.

At the 2025 edition, one of the musicians present at the festival told me he feels Romania right now has the spirit Germany had in the ’90s. That hunger for events, for music, for community.

I’ve probably shown everyone that it can be done in Romania too. That we can have a festival like abroad, that we can have a community, that we can prioritize the love we have for this music and the community around it. That Romania’s touring scene can evolve too that we can have sold-out rock/metal shows weekly in Bucharest. That the Romanian bands scene can evolve, that Romanian bands can play sold-out shows, bring productions, an international sound, present ourselves at another level. And cross the country’s borders.

I think the interesting things are only just beginning now.

Name a “no” from a band’s management that turned into a “yes.” What happened in that conversation?

Many years ago I had to fly out and meet a certain management in person to explain that Romania isn’t a third-world country and that, even though they had no statistics or aggregator to analyze data about the consumer audience in Romania, it was worth making the effort. The reaction after the concert was: ‘we didn’t know we had so many people listening to us here.’

The Prodigy aren’t metal. Why did you want someone who doesn’t fit your own definition and what does that say about where you’re taking the festival?

It’s not the first time we’ve gone in this direction. In 2024 we had Pendulum close the festival. Last year we had Electric Callboy as headliners. We’ve also had names like The Dropkick Murphys or Sleep Token. Rockstadt has always been a festival that dared to break the conventional barriers around how this genre is perceived, while keeping its identity intact. We don’t want to be a ‘safe’ festival we want to be a platform that stays faithful to its values and sets out to grow a community we’re all part of. And if you want to grow, you can’t stay stuck in the same patterns for decades.

As for The Prodigy, they’re no strangers to metal festivals. They were open to our proposal to play an event conventionally labeled as metal. Last year they headlined Hellfest, one of the biggest events of its kind in Europe. Anyone who grew up in the ’90s remembers the famous concert at Sala Polivalentă in Bucharest. They’re the band that united the metal generations, the punk ones, the rave and electronic music ones. And that, in itself, is more metal than any distortion.

Just like Hellfest, Rockstadt has become a place where you can find everything from The Prodigy to the most extreme subgenres of music. That’s the beauty of music. That attitude, I think, is as metal as it gets.

44% foreigners. Brașov on the world map. What’s the most improbable place in the world someone has written you from to say “I’m coming to Rockstadt”?

To this day I still can’t understand how we managed to gather such a significant number of foreigners. Our promotion was word of mouth we never had the budgets needed to present ourselves seriously beyond the borders. We have people coming from the most distant corners of the world, all the way to India and Australia.

But perhaps the most impressive thing is that we’ve come to have a steady group of a few hundred people from South America who come to Rockstadt every year. It got so serious that there’s a travel agency handling their trip.

Community, loyalty, belonging. What do they owe you and what do you owe them?

As I said, we’re fans of this music. It’s the main reason we started this festival. We wanted to have an event in Romania like the ones abroad. Within the limits of reality, of course. Nobody owes anybody anything. Together, we grew. Naturally and organically. First and foremost, it’s the audience’s merit. We were only the binding agent that created a platform. We’ve stayed the same fans of the music. Together we’re part of a wonderful community, the kind you rarely find. That, I think, is the most important thing. The moment this ecosystem loses its balance and its identity, that’s when we need to start asking ourselves questions. For now, the sky is the limit, and we can only get there together, through what we manage to build.

They call you “a cultural revolution.” How would you describe, in three words, what you’ve built?

An impossible dream. If I’m to elaborate a dream that at least I believed impossible. Dan always believed it possible, and without him the Rockstadt we know today wouldn’t exist. I’m glad people proved me wrong.

The question no one ever asks a festival director, and that you’d like to hear at least once?

Even though it’s not the audience’s job or obligation to understand what a festival involves, I’d maybe like the audience to be interested in what the effort of organizing a festival in Romania entails an effort that’s several times harder than abroad. Not just in our case, but in the case of every event in the country. I’d like the audience to put pressure on those who govern us regarding the cultural sector to find out how much of their ticket money goes to taxes and what we get back in terms of cultural support. Unfortunately, in our relationship with the state, and especially regarding resources and the laws we have at our disposal, we’re disadvantaged, and we live in a ‘symbiosis’ that can no longer be applied properly in 2026. And there’s a limit to what the cultural sector can do on its own. Improvisation only gets you so far. We need a system in which both sides collaborate.

Twenty years from now, the festival exists without you. What sound do you want left in the valley when you’re no longer behind it?

All I want is that, after I die, some other 16 or 17-year-old kid comes along who remembers there was once a madman who did something for this music. And who wants to do the same thing. That’s exactly what I did.

Rockstadt Extreme Fest 27-31 July 2026 · Ghimbav, Brașov