Poland’s Dark Decay Festival Launches this June With Selofan, Days of Sorrow, Bragolin, Ductape, Christ Vs Warhol, and More!

Poznań, Poland, is preparing for three nights of darkwave, deathrock, post-punk, and the sort of dawn that finds your eyeliner still intact but your soul slightly rearranged.

This summer brings the first edition of Dark Decay Festival, a new gothic convergence set to take over 2Progi in Poznań, across three nights from June 25 to 28. For anyone tired of watching the darker corners of underground music kept in neat little boxes, this festival feels like a rare indulgence: all those feverish forms finally thrown together under one roof, with just enough danger in the air to draw blood.

The event comes from the organizers behind Shadow Dance Party, the long-running concert and DJ series in Poznań, alongside Return To The Batcave, the annual Wrocław festival that has spent nearly twenty years earning the loyalty of Polish and international crowds alike. With Dark Decay Festival, they are taking a broader route, bringing together darkwave projects, harsher deathrock, and post-punk bands for a bill with enough range to satisfy devoted lifers and lure in the curious with the promise of three very full nights and very little sleep.

The first wave of confirmed artists already makes a strong case for showing up early and staying reckless. Selofan, Psyche, Ductape, Soror Dolorosa, Date at Midnight, and Christ vs Warhol are all set to appear, offering a lineup that balances beloved veterans with newer names still climbing toward wider recognition. It is the sort of bill that inspires devotion, debate, and at least one message from a friend claiming they are definitely going before immediately asking whether anyone can split a hotel.

And for those who believe the evening should continue after the bands leave the stage, the festival will host DJ parties every night after the final live set. The promise is simple: dancefloor delirium from dusk till dawn with top DJs and the kind of songs that can turn a room full of strangers into a temporary congregation in black boots.

Dark Decay Festival looks set to give Poland’s gothic calendar a fresh focal point, one built for people who like their summer festivals with a little more romance, a little more ruin, and none of the forced cheer that usually comes with warm weather.

Check out the roster of darklings on the slab:

Aux Animaux is the Stockholm-based ‘hauntwave’ project of Gözde Düzer, an Istanbul-born musician whose darkwave blends theremin, dystopian synths, horror imagery, and occult tension. Active since 2015, she has built a one-woman world where goth atmosphere meets political feeling and animal-rights conviction, with songs that feel ritualistic, cinematic, and primed for late-night dance floors and solitary wanderings alike after dark.

Demonizer by aux animaux, Dancing Plague