How Volt Runs Charging, Lockers & Camp Power at Roskilde

Roskilde Festival is one of Europe's largest music events, drawing more than 130,000 people to a temporary city south of Roskilde every summer. Volt has run on site since 2012, when three DTU students tested the powerbank-rental concept at Roskilde Festival and Smukfest from a converted caravan. That makes Roskilde one of Volt's two founding sites, and today it is the deployment that carries the full service range at once: the Volt Charging Service, hand-in charging, Event Lockers, Cool Lockers, SOUNDBOKS Battery Swap, and BoogieBeam in the camping areas. See the Volt Roskilde Festival page for the full service list, or how to get there for the 2027 edition. Here is how the full deployment works, and what it shows an organiser weighing a similar setup.

The festival in numbers

Roskilde Festival began in 1971 and has run as a non-profit organisation since the Roskilde Foundation took it over the following year, putting ticket proceeds toward music, culture and humanitarian causes rather than shareholders. The festival's own site describes itself as "non-profit, volunteer-driven and independent" and confirms the next edition runs 26 June to 3 July 2027.

The scale is what makes the site interesting to run a service on. Roskilde describes its own footprint as around 350 football pitches, home to more than 130,000 festival goers for eight days, briefly making it one of Denmark's largest cities. The campsite splits into four categories, Regular Camping, Special Camping, Community Camping, and Volunteer Camping, and the festival opens across five named entrances. Roskilde also holds the Nordic Swan Ecolabel and is a member of YOUROPE, the European Festival Association, alongside two other Volt festivals, Smukfest and Provinssi.

What Volt runs at Roskilde

The official Roskilde map lists Volt's camp gear rental under its own local name, "Rent Your Gear". Every other product runs under Volt's own naming. Together they cover charging, storage and camp power across the whole eight-day event.

Volt Charging Service and hand-in charging

The staffed offering: a festival goer collects a pocket-sized Volt-Charger at a Volt booth, pays a refundable deposit, and swaps it for a fully charged one once a day at a Volt swapping station. Anyone who would rather not carry a rental can use hand-in charging instead: drop a phone or a personal powerbank at the booth and collect it charged later. Both run in parallel through the full eight days, which matters at a festival this long: a phone that only needs to survive a weekend needs a different plan than one that has to last a week of photos, contactless payment and navigation.

Event Lockers and Cool Lockers

Personal storage with a code sent by email and SMS before each slot, open and re-lock as often as needed during opening hours. Event Lockers and Cool Lockers add refrigeration for anything that needs to stay cold: food, drinks, or medication like insulin. At a site the size of Roskilde, splitting storage into ordinary and cooled options means the same service footprint covers both a spare phone charger and a week's insulin supply without a separate arrangement for either.

SOUNDBOKS Battery Swap and BoogieBeam

Camp power runs on the same swap logic as the charging service. SOUNDBOKS Battery Swap lets a festival goer trade a drained Gen4 battery for a full one at a Volt point, sold in packages sized to the length of the stay. BoogieBeam, the camp-canopy party light seen widely across Roskilde's camping areas, runs on a charger topped up daily at the same points. Both are built around the same idea as the powerbank service: gear that has to run all week gets refreshed daily rather than requiring the festival goer to carry a full week of charge in from home.

Rent Your Gear

Roskilde's branded name for Volt's camp gear rental: tents, pavilions and camping kit rented for the stay instead of bought once and abandoned on site. It sits alongside a festival that already runs an active circular-camping push, three colour-coded waste-sorting streams issued at check-in and a 2026 rule change limiting single-use pavilions in favour of durable, reusable ones. A rented tent that goes back to Volt at the end of the week rather than into the festival's own clean-up effort points the same direction as that policy.

Why the full range matters at this scale

Most Volt festivals run a subset of the product range that fits their format: a weekend metal festival needs charging and lockers, a one-day urban event might need only lockers. Roskilde runs the entire range at once, across an eight-day, five-entrance, four-camping-category site of more than 130,000 people. That is a materially different operating problem: staffing has to cover a longer stretch, swap points need enough throughput for daily charger and battery exchanges rather than a single mid-weekend peak, and the storage and camp-gear side has to work for both a day visitor and someone camping the full week.

For an organiser, running that range through one operator means one contract and one on-site team responsible for every service a festival goer might need, rather than negotiating separate vendors for charging, storage, and camp gear and reconciling three different sets of logistics against the same site plan. Volt holds the relationship with both the organiser and the festival goer across all of it, from pre-event booking through on-site collection to end-of-festival returns.

What this means for other large or multi-day events

Roskilde is Volt's proof point for running the complete service range at real scale, and three things about the deployment transfer to other large or multi-day festivals considering a similar setup. First, an eight-day format needs the swap mechanic, whether for a powerbank, a SOUNDBOKS battery, or a BoogieBeam charger, because no single overnight charge realistically lasts the whole event. Second, splitting storage into standard and cooled options covers real medical and food-safety needs that a single locker type cannot. Third, camp gear rental fits naturally alongside a festival's own sustainability programme rather than working against it, since rented and returned gear is gear that never becomes site waste.

Volt has run over 120 festivals and events in 2026 across six countries. Organisers weighing a comparable multi-service setup can start a conversation via the for organisers page or at hello@getvolt.dk, and see how the same operator scales down at a shorter event via the Copenhell case study or the Smukfest all-week locker operation.

Frequently asked questions

How long has Volt worked with Roskilde Festival?

Since 2012, when three DTU students tested the powerbank-rental concept at Roskilde Festival and Smukfest from a converted caravan. Roskilde was one of Volt's two founding sites. Read the full story on About Volt.

What does Volt run at Roskilde Festival?

The Volt Charging Service, hand-in charging, Event Lockers, Cool Lockers, SOUNDBOKS Battery Swap, BoogieBeam charger swaps, and Rent Your Gear, Roskilde's name for Volt's camp gear rental.

How big is Roskilde Festival?

Roskilde Festival runs eight days and draws more than 130,000 people to a site the festival's own materials describe as covering around 350 football pitches, briefly making it one of Denmark's largest cities.

Can another large non-profit or multi-day festival run a similar Volt setup?

Yes. Volt runs over 120 festivals and events across six countries, and Roskilde is the reference deployment for running the full service range under one operator at scale. Organisers can start a conversation at resources.getvolt.dk/for-organisers/ or at hello@getvolt.dk.

Curious about the light unit that shows up in Roskilde camp photos? See BoogieBeam, explained.