For more than thirty years you could walk into Appelpop, a pop festival on the riverfront in the Dutch town of Tiel, without paying. On 11 and 12 September that changed: you needed a ticket to get in. The first paid edition sold out completely (report in Dutch, like most sources in this article), and presale for 2027 has already started.
That matters to more organisers than the ones in Tiel. Plenty of village fairs, parades, street festivals and music weekends run on the same model: free entry, with the money coming from the bar, the sponsors and the volunteers. This article walks through what happened in Tiel and what you can use if your own budget is starting to pinch.
What happened at Appelpop
It did not start with a decision on principle. It started with rain. In September 2025, Appelpop drew more than 100,000 visitors, with 750 volunteers and 180 sponsors, according to the organisers. The Saturday brought thunderstorms, rain and cold. At a free festival that means a smaller crowd, but above all lower bar takings, and bar takings were what the budget leaned on. Just before that edition, chairman Kees van Keulen had already told Dutch public broadcaster NOS that the festival was "hanging by a thread" because costs had risen enormously since the pandemic.
In December the foundation behind the festival drew its conclusion: as things stood, it would be "irresponsible" to organise the 2026 edition. The decision followed in March 2026. A weekend ticket would cost €30, Friday €15 and Saturday €20. Children up to the age of 12 stayed free.
At the festival itself, everyone had an opinion. Some visitors thought it was a shame, and one said the site felt quieter than before. Others thought €15 for a festival day was cheap. What stood out: hardly anyone was surprised. The organisers had told the story months earlier.
Appelpop is not the first
The pattern is older than this year. Dutch trade magazine Entertainment Business wrote about the end of free festivals back in 2023: Ribs & Blues in Raalte introduced admission after a rained-out edition, Werfpop in Leiden did so to cover higher costs, and Parkpop in The Hague stopped altogether after forty years.
Costs have kept rising since. In the city of Breda, the council wanted to raise the permit fee for a large event from 2027 from €17,000 to almost €37,000. After an open letter from eighteen organisations, the coalition parties now want to freeze the fees for 2027, but the city still intends to move to cost-covering fees in time. That is a postponement, not a cancellation.
Why admission moves the weather risk
The main difference between free and paid is not the amount. It is the moment the money comes in.
At a free festival you earn on the day itself. If it rains, part of the audience stays home and the rest orders less. By then you have already paid for the stage, the security and the permit.
With advance sales, a large share of the income is in before you have seen the weather forecast. You also know weeks ahead how many people are coming. That helps with purchasing, with scheduling volunteers and with the conversation with your local authority about visitor numbers.
A worked example. Say a village music weekend always drew around 6,000 visitors. The organisers start charging €10 and assume a quarter will drop out. That leaves 4,500 paying visitors and €45,000 in ticket income. VAT comes off that, and there are ticketing costs. At a flat fee of €0.50 per ticket that is €2,250, plus the costs of your payment provider. What remains is not profit. It is a buffer the free edition never had.
Six lessons for your own switch
1. Say it early and say why
Appelpop explained in December that things could not go on, decided in March and sold tickets for September from the end of March. Visitors had nine months to get used to the idea. An admission price that first shows up on the poster feels like an ambush. An admission price with an honest story feels like chipping in for something that belongs to the town.
2. Start low
€15 a day is not much for a festival with well-known names, and visitors said so themselves. A low entry price keeps the threshold small and leaves you room to adjust later.
3. Keep children free
A free festival is often a family outing. Letting children in free keeps it that way, and a family does not pay admission four times. Do give them a free ticket if you want to know how many children are coming. How that works is covered in free events with ticketing.
4. Offer a day ticket and a weekend ticket
Not everyone comes for two days. With separate day tickets and a cheaper weekend ticket, visitors choose for themselves, and the weekend ticket rewards those who commit early. If you want to reward early buyers further, you can use an early-bird price that switches automatically on a date.
5. Expect people without a ticket
Anyone who has walked straight in for thirty years will turn up at the fence without a ticket the first time. If there is still room, you do not want to send them away. So make sure you can sell at the door and that those sales count towards the same capacity as your advance sales.
6. Know how your obligations change
Charging admission is more than a price on a poster. You owe VAT on ticket sales; in the Netherlands that is usually the reduced 9% rate for performances, and other countries have their own rules. If the event does not go ahead, buyers are entitled to their money back. And you need an enclosed site with an entrance where tickets are scanned. Appelpop immediately used that entrance for something else: age checks and breath tests for young visitors. A gate costs money, but it also gives you a grip on who comes in.
When staying free is the better choice
Admission is not the answer for every event. You cannot fence off a parade through the village or a market in the high street. An event that largely runs on public funding may come with conditions that require free entry. And at a small party, the gate can cost more than the admission brings in.
There are in-between forms. You can stay free and still ask visitors to book a ticket, so you know how many people are coming. You can charge only for the evening programme. Or you can ask for a voluntary contribution with the free booking. None of those options closes a gap of tens of thousands of euros, but they can be enough to absorb a setback.
In closing
Appelpop shows that an audience can take more than organisers tend to think, as long as the price is reasonable and the story holds up. It also shows that this is a decision you had better not take in the week after a washed-out edition, but in the autumn, with the numbers in front of you.
Want to work out what admission would mean for your event? At MijnEvent you pay a flat fee per paid ticket and nothing on free tickets for a public event. See our pricing or register your organisation. Signing up is free.
