Entertainment MDLBEAST Soundstorm established that size doesn’t have to come at the cost of care, culture, or connection I flew from Mumbai to Bahrain and then on to Riyadh on Gulf Air, already bracing myself for the usual festival travel chaos, but that never really came. Pick-up was smooth, hotel check-in was frictionless, and there was an underlying sense that things had been thought through before I even landed. That feeling of being taken care of stayed with me all weekend, and by the time Soundstorm began, it felt less like arriving at a massive event and more like stepping into something that was already running exactly the way it was supposed to. I went in expecting Soundstorm to be impressive because that’s what everyone says about Soundstorm, but what I wasn’t prepared for was how easy it felt to exist inside. It sounds like a strange compliment for a festival this massive, but it matters, especially when you’re clocking multiple nights, walking kilometres without realizing it, bouncing between stages, moods, genres, and still somehow not feeling irritated or overwhelmed. Once you’re inside the site, the scale hits you instantly, but what stands out more is how structured everything is. This isn’t one giant field with stages scattered around in the hope that people will figure it out. Soundstorm is designed to function like a city, with clear districts, pacing, and purpose, a clarity that changes the entire experience over three long nights. You don’t just scramble between performances; you move through environments, and that sense of orientation stays with you even when you’re wandering without a plan. Photo: Courtesy of Soundstorm Downtown sits right at the heart of this layout. It’s not a headline stage zone, and it’s not something you rush to tick off, it’s the space you keep returning to between sets, moods, and energy spikes. It houses five satellite stages, Yard, Roog, Greenhouse, Swing and Mixtape, each programmed differently, which means you’re constantly stumbling into something unexpected rather than waiting for a scheduled moment. This is where you eat properly instead of panic-snacking, where you sit without guilt, where you people-watch, regroup, and recalibrate before diving back into the chaos. With over 40 food and beverage vendors spread across the area, the food feels woven into the experience rather than pushed to the edges, and that small detail ends up mattering more than you realise at 3 am. From there, the rest of Soundstorm opens up in a way that feels deliberate. You move from open-air stages built for spectacle into enclosed, immersive spaces designed for focus, then back out again, without ever feeling like you’ve stepped outside the festival’s rhythm. The Tunnel stage, fully enclosed and weatherproof, is built around a massive sun installation behind the DJ booth, creating this almost surreal, cinematic atmosphere where the outside world disappears completely. With space for over 12,000 people and a solid concrete floor that keeps the sound tight and physical, Tunnel feels less like a festival tent and more like a warehouse dropped into the desert. The underground and techno-heavy zones lean even further into that idea of immersion. Soundstorm West, built using over a thousand shipping containers, becomes its own club district, packed with Plexi, Log, Port and Silk stages, plus Tunnel anchoring the area, and the Elrow-designed Port stage adds a playful, slightly chaotic edge to the otherwise dark, driving energy. This is where hours slip by without you noticing, because the environment is doing as much work as the music. Photo: Courtesy of Soundstorm There’s also a quieter but deeply meaningful shift when you wander toward the new 6AG stage. Designed like a modern Arabic wedding, it immediately stands out from everything else on site. Draped structures, ceremonial lighting, and a layout that encourages gathering rather than confrontation make it feel communal instead of imposing. With a capacity of around six thousand, the space never feels like a crowd being managed. People stay longer than planned, face each other as much as the stage, and settle into the warmth of the lighting and the closeness of the sound. It’s also where Soundstorm’s commitment to local and regional artists feels the most confident, not as a cultural checkbox, but as something infused naturally into the festival’s core. And then there’s the Big Beast main stage, which anchors everything. Towering over the site, it’s impossible to ignore, yet it never feels like it’s compensating for anything. Knowing that this stage previously broke world records for height and LED scale makes immediate sense when you’re standing in front of it, but what matters more is how well it functions. The visuals are massive, the sound travels cleanly across huge distances, and even when you’re all the way back, you don’t feel disconnected from what’s happening on stage. With a capacity of 65,000 and an overall site pixel count pushing past 90 million LEDs across stages and screens, the visual language feels continuous rather than fragmented. Photo: Courtesy of Soundstorm Over three days, Soundstorm drew more than 500,000 people to the site, and yet still managed to feel navigable rather than overwhelming, which is no easy feat at this scale. That’s exactly why Cardi B’s set landed as one of the most important moments of the weekend for me. She understood the scale instantly and played with it instead of attempting to overpower it. Her quips loosened the crowd, her now-viral “Assalamu alaykum” cut through the night with humor and warmth, and when she performed songs from her latest album AM I THE DRAMA? live for the first time, it felt very intentional. This wasn’t just her Saudi debut; it felt like a preview, almost a trailer for what her upcoming world tour might look like, and choosing Soundstorm for that moment felt deliberate rather than symbolic. Post Malone shifted the energy entirely. There was a softness to his set that landed hard in the middle of all that scale. Watching him move through older hits like