“It’s always been Metal Overdrive”: Wacken founder Thomas Jensen celebrates 35 years of heavy music’s biggest festival

Thomas Jensen is in a shuttle bus racing to the airport. We’re barely three days on from the end of an almighty 35th anniversary Wacken Open Air 2026, but the festival’s legendary founder is already hungry for more. Leaving behind Germany’s Schleswig-Holstein, he’s headed off to Blackpool and a buffet of old school punk, barely able to contain the love of music that’s made him the man he is.

“I’m on my way for a Holiday In The Sun!” he grins. “London is calling! I’m going there via Hamburg airport as we speak, then I’ll be catching a train up to Rebellion Festival first thing tomorrow morning to see Cock Sparrer, UK Subs, Sham 69 and a bunch of others. I hear that Bloodstock is happening this weekend, too, so I might just pop down there on Sunday if I can make it work!”

Bursting with enthusiasm, cheeky anecdotes and undisguised admiration for the bands he adores, Thomas feels more like a friendly face you’d get stuck in with, sinking beers and sharing stories at the festival bar, than the mastermind behind it all. Some 37 years since he (then the bassist in rock covers band Skyline) and good friend Holger Hübner (a rock and metal DJ) first resolved to host an open air concert in their local gravel pit, however, he has become one of the most important and recognisable faces in the industry. With his flight-time closing in, we sat down to find out why the ‘Holy Ground’ became what it is in 2026, and how things can get even heavier from here...

From a fan’s perspective, Wacken 2026 was a hot, heavy delight. How was it for you?

“It was fantastic. I had a blast. The weather did its part for the experience, but I also had so many great encounters with different people. That started on Wednesday with Rose Tattoo. It continued with Danko Jones, a good friend of mine from back when I was on tour with him, Saxon – who were also there this year – and Motörhead over in the UK. Of course, it gets a little too much, almost like overkill, but you need to understand that you will miss people you expected to see and bump into people you didn’t. Like Barry Drinkwater who used to run merch for Motörhead or Vanessa Warwick [who hosted MTV’s Headbangers Ball] and is here with Sabaton, but actually worked with my record label back when we were putting together our first real DVD release! It was definitely one of the greater editions of Wacken. I don’t like to talk about ‘the greatest’ as if we are in a competition, especially when there are so many emotions involved, but it was great.”

How much of a thrill is it to watch the line-up come to life and see what you’ve put together?

“Back in the 1990s when we were losing money, we were so gutted when we were given the chance to promote the Paradise Lost/Sepultura tour as a standalone show. It became our first-ever sell-out. But then the show got cancelled because of a mix-up in scheduling with the venue where they had to put on handball instead. Having both those bands here was just one special moment!”

Do you still get much of a chance to interact with fans – and to be one yourself?

“I ran into some chaps that I know from Leeds at the opening ceremony at the Landgasthof last Sunday. We got talking and they told me their biggest dream was to go backstage with Paradise Lost. I know the band’s manager, Andy, so I just asked. My daughter had to organise it, and they all got sidetracked out in the festival, but they got there eventually which was so cool. The band had to leave quite early, so they donated their whole fridge full of drinks to those guys, and the next time I saw them they were just having a great time at this table full of beer! Moments like those are what this is all about. And I could go on and on. Like how I got a photo with Rob Halford, too...”

Were there any acts that particularly surprised you?

“I got to catch [Bobby Liebling of Pentagram’s new band] The Limit right at the very end of the festival. I couldn’t believe how tight they were as band made up of guys from Portugal, Germany and America. And it was basically their first show. The band existed before but that was the first real show this version with Bobby have ever played, with just a warm-up at the local pub earlier in the weekend. It was unbelievable. And they enjoyed it so much we’re in the process of setting up a tour for them now, getting all the old-school booking and tour guys back together.”

Not everything about Wacken is old-school these days, though...

“When I talk about a lot of our big bands, it can sound quite nostalgic. Critics might say ‘dated’. But this is the beauty of Wacken, that you have the heritage, but also so many new bands. The big one this year were the winners of our worldwide Metal Battle, a band called Force from Chile who feel like a rebirth of Cinderella or Van Halen. They are super young, but played was some crazy shit!”

When you started out with the first edition in 1990, did you ever see Wacken becoming this big?

“This was never our plan. In the early years, we never even dreamed that it could become our profession or something that we could make a living out of. That wasn’t the idea. The idea was that we and our friend Andy, the drummer in Skyline would to put on a big rock show with a bunch of cabinets, lights and production so that the show felt bigger than the bands. We wanted to party together with our friends listening to the music that we love. I have memories of the great camaraderie. Everything was run by volunteers from the local football club or our group of friends. The catering was just German fried sausage with a little bit of bread and maybe some mustard. We all had the time of our lives. But then many of the 800 people who came to that first edition started asking when it was happening next year. If there hadn’t been that demand we might never have done another. We never dreamed we could. There was no business roadmap. There was no plan of doing this and that and milestones we needed to hit. It would have been a one-off!”

Did the third edition in 1992 feel like where things was beginning to take shape?

“We were really lucky to get Saxon as headliners. Biff [Byford, Saxon singer] always says that they played for nothing. That’s not true. But even that we paid the standard Saxon fee was special. They were being produced by a German guy at the time, who made sure that we weren’t ripped off. I give Saxon a lot of credit for that. They came to a festival which probably seemed like it was in the middle of nowhere and played a stage with production that was okay, but way more low-level than what they were used to. Also, if you look back, you see that we had Blind Guardian on the bill that year, too. They were just starting out, but became a big band in Wacken and everywhere else! We had the advantage of being able to grow slowly. And I had I’d been involved in so many things to do with the running of a festival. I worked behind a bar. I played in a band. I’d always been fascinated by production. I did security. I once even cooked Chili con carne for Bobby Blitz from Overkill!”

Even more remarkably, the festival grew and grew through the metal slump of the 1990s...

“The 90s certainly weren’t the heyday for heavy metal. The glory days of the 1980s were over. And it was difficult. I was speaking to Wendy Dio [Ronnie James’ widow and manager] the other day about when we promoted a Dio show, I believe on the Angry Machines tour in 1996, where we sold 167 tickets. That didn’t even pay for the catering. It could be a nightmare in those days. Really, really difficult. But we still loved all those bands like Saxon and Motörhead. I think that’s what a lot of fans give us credit for: how we continued to do this even when nobody else wanted to.”

As a fluent English speaker, you must have been a massive asset. How did you pick it up?

“I’m the kind of person who needs a purpose to learn something. Like, I’ll empty a truck full of cabinets, but only because I know there’ll be loud music later on. In being motivated to learn English, there were a few factors. It began when I was 14 around 1980. I was already getting into [English-speaking] bands like AC/DC and Judas Priest, but then I discovered second-wave punk. Of course I loved The Clash and The Sex Pistols, but that era was over, and I got into it through Cockney Rejects and Cock Sparrer, whose songs Shock Troops and Where Are They Now are like anthems to me. Around the same time, there were a group of English employees at an aluminium window factory nearby that I got to be friends with. They’d even bring me records from the UK. They were all really skilled metal workers. Maybe that was a sign of things to come...”

Are there things you miss about the old days?

“When you look back, it feels like those earlier years were longer. Nowadays, they go by so fast and we’re working all the time, promoting huge tours in Germany and things like that. On thing I do miss is how in those days, when people bought a record, they wanted to like it. You’d paid your money. That meant that you actually tried to get into it. That didn’t work with everything but, for me, it worked for a lot. That mindset is missing nowadays. It’s good that music is easy to access. But when it gets too easy, it becomes disposable. And if you’re just listening to so much, you don’t give songs the attention they deserve. You miss a lot. Like, how can someone seriously judge a prog-rock song by just listening to it once – or maybe just listening to it halfway through? I Music is meant to be complex. I don’t like elevator music. I like music that’s doing something; when it’s art.”

What were the other turning points in becoming the 85,000-ticket behemoth Wacken is today?

“The first turning-point was 1996/1997. In 1996 we had a big German band called The Böhse Onkelz, who came from punk but became more metal and hardcore rock’n’roll. In 1997, we finally got Motörhead. That’s when we moved from our original site to where the Wacken Infield is today. Motörhead were the first big band to play there. After that, in 2004 and 2005 we had the impact from Sam Dunn’s film Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey, which gave the Wacken brand a big lift internationally. I’m still good friends with Sam. He brought me to see Iron Maiden: Flight 666 at SXSW in 2009, then this year he brought me and my family to the premiere of his new Judas Priest documentary at the Berlin Film festival. I’m not sure when that’s released, but it’s fantastic!”

You have some newcomers like Knocked Loose and Electric Callboy joining old Wacken favourites Edguy and Helloween in 2027. How difficult is it to maintain identity while moving forward?

“If you go back to the first five editions of Wacken, we always had the same press release. It was before the time of computers, but Holger had an electric typewriter and he was able to save things into it, like our permit application and licensing, so all that we had to do was change the date. The press release we had saved said the aim of Wacken was to combine these real, big established bands – most of whom we couldn’t afford anyway – with the best of the new blood. That mindset has remained in our DNA. It’s where the Wacken Metal Battle and the Wacken Foundation come from. Even this year, when we were celebrating our 35th anniversary, I chose the slogan ‘Party on!’ because I didn’t want to be too backward-looking. And while I’m happy getting to see older acts I love, even if they sound different, or only manage one song, we want to give people the option to see someone new, too. As much as I like line-ups that are very organised, Wacken has always been the opposite. It makes me think of the title to our old DVD: Metal Overdrive. It’s just like that!”

Finally, what are your ambitions looking further ahead?

“I want to get back more to the music and leave the business of the festival to the next generation. We have a great guy André Jürgens who runs the Reload festival which shares a lot our DNA and where we’ve been shareholders for like 12 years. Most of our wider team is both really young and really good, too. Holger said to me recently, ‘You’re turning 60 soon, and so am I!’ We hadn’t really been thinking about passing the festival on, but then you realise what age you are and anything can happen. We just need to pick people in a way to ensure that the music always stays on top!”

Wacken Open Air returns from July 28-31, 2027. Get your tickets now.