Some things might look impressive on paper or in somebody’s imagination, but in real life, they turn into a catastrophe. This happened at Love Parade, where people had to find their way through a tunnel opening onto a staircase. When a crowd surge happened, people tumbled down, and some were trampled or crushed against the walls of the tunnel.

In an attempt to recreate the phenomenon of the original 1969 Woodstock, the organizers of Woodstock ’99 had a lineup that would make any event jealous. Soon the organizers realized they had a shortage of water and food, which, in the scorching heat of the tarmac-paved airfield, led to a catastrophe. To make an already bad situation even worse, some of the audience decided to organize a real arson upon hearing the song Fire.

When your festival ticket costs up to $100,000, you have every right to expect every single luxury detail you were promised by the organizers. However, the guests of the Fyre Festival were in for a huge disappointment when instead of being met with gourmet food and lavish accommodations, they found themselves on a half-finished beachside site with tents. Most of the announced major acts didn’t show up either.

Transportation is another vital part of festival organization, especially if the venue is remote or hard to reach. The organizers of TomorrowWorld failed to do anything about it, leaving around 40,000 attendees stranded on poor roads in horrible weather conditions. There were no shelters at the site either.

Trying to ride on Woodstock’s success, the Powder Ridge Rock Festival was one of many that emerged in the following years. It didn’t even get to begin because of some legal problems, but somehow estimated 30,000 people didn’t get the memo and turned up at the venue ready to rock.

Organizing Bestival in the valley of a country park on the Isle of Wight might have seemed like a perfect idea until the weather drastically changed during the festival weekend. The valley was flooded, with most tents finding themselves underwater, while the rest were taken away by strong winds. One of the main stages sank.

When people who were packed so tightly it was difficult to breathe started suffocating in a mosh pit at Roskilde Festival, it took the organizers too long to move the decision to pause the performance and move the people out of the area up to the decision-makers. As a result, nine people lost their lives.

One of the most recent tragedies, the Astroworld Festival in Houston took the lives of ten people when a crowd of 50,000 attendants turned into a surge.

Hiring the Hells Angels, a worldwide outlaw motorcycle club, to handle security at the Altamont Festival was a decision the organizers regretted very quickly. Bikers “protected” order by battering the crowd with chains and sawed-off pool cues. One teenager was killed and many others ended up with injuries.

The small town of Griffin, Indiana, was neither expecting nor prepared to have 200,000 attendees for its Erie Canal Soda Pop Festival. Soon vendors ran out of food, and the sanitation facilities were completely insufficient. Many artists canceled their shows, leaving the stage empty for prolonged periods of time. To top it all, it started raining, turning the ground into a muddy mess.

The weather in Indianapolis was definitely not the best for conducting an open-air event. The organizers of the Indiana State Fair and the police at the festival considered canceling, but as two acts were ready to go on stage, they were told it was too late. When the stage collapsed because of strong winds, 7 people died and 58 were injured.

If your festival sells 185,000 tickets, you should be prepared to have top-notch security as overcrowding is inevitable. Not only was the security of the Electric Daisy Carnival not prepared to handle such a crowd, but they also were negligent about ID checking, resulting in hundreds of minors in the main arena. Multiple injuries were reported.

Severe overcrowding and heat exhaustion that caused many people to collapse turned out to be the least of Time Warp Argentina’s problems. Six lives were lost to acute poisoning from bad drugs. An investigation followed, bringing in the heads of the organizing company.

First those who bought tickets for the Zoo8 festival had to go through enormous queues to get inside, then struggle through the overcrowded site, only to find that some of the headliners had pulled out, and to top it all, the venue had a shortage of water and lack of toilets. What followed can only be compared to a post-apocalyptic disaster movie.

All seemed to be going well for the Glastonbury Festival until the very end. But as the festival was over, a group of Irish Travelers who were having their own festival on an adjacent field decided to take advantage of Glastonbury’s trash. There was a massive clash with security that came to be known as the Battle of Yeoman’s Bridge.

The Hudson Project had all the chances to be a good festival, what with the lineup and decent organization, but the last day was canceled because the weather forecast promised heavy rain. Even though it was a good call, many attendees were upset at the decision. Those who failed to leave on time were stranded for days as their cars got stuck in the mud.

Severe weather conditions put a stop to the Isle of Wight Festival before it even started. Ferry rides were canceled, and car lines extending for seven miles wouldn’t move overnight, forcing people to sleep inside. Once they were able to move, many chose to return home instead of making it to their destination. Those who did reach the campsite found it had turned into a mud field.

Bloc Festival was promised a venue that would hold 2,800 people, but when that didn’t happen a large crowd of people had to be crammed in, with an even larger number of attendees waiting outside the premises.

It was not only the Sled Island venue but the entire city of Calgary, Canada, that suffered from the unseen-before flooding that caused the city authorities to initiate an emergency evacuation. The promoters had to cancel hundreds of performances and deal with the attendees who demanded refunds.

70,000 attendees were leaving the stadium after one of the performances at the Mawazine Festival, when some of them decided to make a separate exit to leave the area faster. This resulted in a stampede and overturned metal fences, trapping those who fell. The police didn’t provide any security or interfere in the chaos, resulting in the death of 11 people.