The Italy-Based Kappa FuturFestival Debuts in Mexico This Weekend — Can It Find Its Groove in a Crowded Market?

So many festivals are synonymous with the sites where they happen. Coachella wouldn’t be Coachella without the polo field, palm trees and mountains in the distance. Glastonbury’s identity is intertwined with the terrain of Worthy Farm. Kappa FuturFestival in Turin, Italy has built a global reputation on both its sharp programming and the former industrial site where the fest has happened for the last 17 years. Explore See latest videos, charts and news This weekend, Kappa organizers are taking a gamble with the first ever edition outside of Turin. FuturFestival Mexico happens in Monterrey on Nov. 13-14 at Parque Fundidora, a sprawling site that was once home to a steel and iron foundry. The lineup includes a chic list of DJs and producers including Âme b2b Marcel Dettman, Moodymann b2b Carl Craig, Carlita, Chloé Caillet, Diplo, Damian Lazarus, Dennis Cruz, Ki/Ki, Omri., Skream, Vintage Culture, Maceo Plex b2b Tiga and more. In fact, it’s the shared DNA between Parque Fundidora and the Turin site, Parco Dora, that led Kappa organizers to Monterrey. Parco Dora, an industrial site that was formerly home to a Fiat steel-making facility and a tire manufacturing plant, has since been renovated into a sprawling park. Parque Fundidora, once home to the first foundry of its kind in Latin America, has gotten a similar transformation, now hosting a wide range of events, from marathons to fashion shows to other large-scale festivals like Tecate Pa’l Norte, which brings roughly 100,000 attendees and will next happen at the site in March. “The Torino event is in a pretty special location, so for us there wasn’t a time frame [in terms of bringing it to another city], we were just looking for the right venue,” says Kappa co-founder Luigi “Gigi” Mazzoleni. “I don’t see FuturFestival in an empty field like 90% of festivals around the world, and with the two parks having similar backgrounds, it felt like it was meant to be in Monterrey.” An area of Parque Fundidora in Monterrey, Mexico Courtesy of Kappa FuturFestival Kappa FuturFestival is operated by its Turin-based parent company Movement Entertainment, which Mazzoleni founded alongside Maurizio “Juni” Vitale. The pair now operate the company with their third partner, Gian Luca Brignone. Movement/Kappa partnered with the Mexico City-based dance event producer Lostnights for FuturFestival Mexico. Lostnights has a strong track record in the space, producing events in Mexico and beyond including the Day Zero brand (which is based in Tulum and hosts editions in Brazil, Bali and more) events at the Tulum venue Tehmplo, headlining shows for global names playing in Mexico and more. Lostnights founder Carlos López tells Billboard that bringing Kappa to Mexico was a function of finding the perfect site and the country’s strong dance music fanbase. “There’s been a lot of events in Mexico City, in Tulum [and formerly] in Playa del Carmen,” he says. “This is a well-known country to organize a dance music festival.” And for good reason, given how well the genre streams in the country. Year to date, dance is the fifth-largest genre in Mexico in terms of on-demand official streams, according to Luminate, after Latin, pop, rock and R&B/hip-hop. There have been 16.67 billion on-demand streams of dance tracks in Mexico from Jan. 2 – Nov. 5, 2026, up 6.9% compared to the same time frame a year ago. This growth, no doubt spurred by the country’s own homegrown scene, is also making it an attractive market for international event brands like Kappa. Insomniac Events’ EDC brand has hosted a Mexico City edition since 2014; Ultra Music Festival started a Mexico City edition in 2017; Belgium-based Tomorrowland hosts its CORE concept to Tulum, Ibiza-based Circoloco has done shows throughout the country and will host a stadium event in Mexico City later this month that will happen days after Germany-based techno festival Time Warp hosts its first Mexico edition in the same city. With a laugh, López says he and the team “are figuring out” if they can succeed in this saturated market. But given the size of Mexico and distance between the country’s dance music hubs, he and the Kappa organizers are confident they can draw a crowd and contribute to the genre’s growth in Mexico, where López says the genre is still often considered “taboo.” “Ultimately, we all want the scene to grow, for more people to know about this music and for it to be good for everyone,” he says. A competitive edge lies in the trust Lostnights has built with audiences around the country over the last 20 years, in tandem with a Kappa’s own strong reputation that helped facilitate a stacked lineup for the first time show. Kappa was founded around the theme of Futurism, the early 20th century art movement that originated in Italy. Key Futurist artist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti developed ideas around automation and electronics, and with Futurism celebrating its 100-year anniversary when Mazzoleni and his partners were developing the festival, the link between this art movement and the art of music made by machines became Kappa’s foundational concept. While Kappa was successful in Italy for years, its global reputation largely grew after the pandemic, when more international attendees started going. “I remember in 2022, we had 7,000 or 8,000 people come from England, then the year after we had 2,000 people from Australia,” says Mazzoleni. “We’ve been investing in this for the last 20 years, and then it grew spontaneously.” In 2024, López and his team made the trek from Mexico to Italy to check out Kappa and talk about partnering on a new edition. As such, Monterrey is both an expansion and a new beginning as Kappa looks to find its footing in a foreign market, a premise Mazzoleni seems at ease about. “I’m not anxious for this first edition to be sold out,” he says. “I like the idea of growing slowly and having a medium to long-term investment. Like many business models, it takes time, especially in the festival world.” López reports that FuturFestival Mexico is drawing fans from around Mexico, throughout South America, the United States and Europe and even as far as South Korea. “There’s a direct flight from Seoul to Monterrey,” he says. “So I’ve been trying to connect with crowds who only have to get on one flight to come party, Mexican style.” When they arrive, they’ll have plenty to see throughout the grounds, with the festival happening across a single stage on Friday and then expanding to four stages on Saturday, when Kappa will happen at full force. “The good thing with Fundidora,” López says, “is that over the next years we can grow as much as we want, because the site is 144 hectares [355 acres].” With the event he helped create officially going international this weekend, Mazzoleni feels the same excitement of seeing if something new will grow as he did in the early days of Turin. “You need to try,” he says. “If you believe in yourself, if you believe in your brand, if you have a good team around you — most of the time, it’s going to be successful.”