This group is for fans or attendees of the Wacken Open Air Festivals, one of the leading summer open air heavy metal music festivals. It takes place annually in the small town of Wacken in Schleswig-Holstein, northern Germany.


With 80,000 festival visitors, and including personnel a total of roughly 82,500 attendees in 2010, it attracts all kinds of metal music fans, such as fans of black metal, death metal, power metal, thrash metal, gothic metal, folk metal, and even metalcore and hard rock from around the world.


The festival was first held in 1990 as a small event for local German bands. By 1998 the event had become the major festival on the European metal calendar and has included over 70 bands from all over Europe, North America and Australia.
W:O:A is usually held at the beginning of August and lasts three days, during which the festival-goers camp on several large camping grounds surrounding the actual festival area. The 70 or more bands perform across four separate stages over the course of the event.