Download Festival

Download Festival is a British rock festival, held annually at Donington Park in Leicestershire, England, since 2003. It is the most popular British summer rock and heavy metal festival and has hosted some of the biggest names in rock and metal including Saxon, Black Sabbath, Metallica, Rammstein, Iron Maiden, Slayer, Muse, Motörhead, Aerosmith, AC/DC, Def Leppard, Kiss, Judas Priest, Status Quo, Motley Crue, Journey, ZZ Top, Whitesnake, Thin Lizzy, and Guns N' Roses. One innovation at the 2015 festival was the massive technological surveillance by police in conjunction with festival organizers Live Nation UK. RFID wristbands and facial recognition technology was used to compare visual scans of attendees against a European criminal database.

History

The Download Festival was conceived as a follow up to the Monsters of Rock festivals which had been held at the Donington Park circuit between 1980 and 1996. The first Download Festival was created by Stuart Galbraith, Tom Pyke and Andy Copping in 2003 in the same location. Rather than run as a single day event Download was initially a two-day event, expanding to three days in 2005.