There was something different about Benicassim 2022 before a single note was played. The campsite filled up with an intensity that even long-standing FIB regulars had not seen before. Two years of cancelled plans, of bought-and-refunded tickets and rescheduled flights, had built up a pressure that finally found its release on the Mediterranean coast. When the music started on the Thursday night, the collective relief was palpable.
The 2022 edition also introduced the new three-day format that FIB has retained ever since, running Thursday through Saturday rather than the traditional four days. Organisers made no secret of the fact that concentrating the best acts into three powerful nights was a deliberate choice, and the result was a tighter, more focused bill that rarely had a weak slot.
Wolf Alice Headline a Landmark Night
Wolf Alice were a logical and inspired choice for one of the headline slots. Ellie Rowsell and her bandmates had spent the pandemic years writing and releasing Blue Weekend, an album that had landed to widespread acclaim and then sat largely unplayed in front of live audiences. At FIB 2022 they finally got to unleash it properly, and the result was stunning. From the driving opening of "The Beach" through to a closing "Don't Delete the Kisses" that reduced a significant portion of the crowd to a tearful singalong, it was the kind of set that confirms a band's status.
The Libertines returned to Benicassim for the first time in years and delivered a characteristically chaotic but thrilling headline performance. Pete Doherty and Carl Barat clearly fed off the energy of a crowd that had been waiting a very long time to see them again, and the result felt genuinely special rather than the nostalgic exercise it could easily have become.
The New Format Beds In
Two Door Cinema Club brought a Friday night energy that was exactly what the crowd needed: anthemic, polished, and impossible not to dance to. "What You Know" and "Something Good Can Work" hit harder than they might have done in any other year. The festival setting, with the warm Mediterranean night and the campsite stretching back towards the sea, gave those songs an almost absurd amount of space to fill.
The supporting programme was strong throughout the three days. The festival felt nimble in a way that four-day editions had sometimes not managed, with the energy staying consistently high from the Thursday opening through to the Saturday close. There were no dead afternoons, no sense of the bill being stretched thin.
The Campsite Atmosphere
Any honest review of FIB 2022 has to acknowledge that the campsite was on a different level. People who had attended fifteen or twenty previous editions said they had never seen it quite like this. Groups who had last been together at the 2019 or 2018 editions arrived with an extra layer of gratitude that translated into a friendliness and open-heartedness that permeated the whole festival.
The July heat was, as always, formidable. Temperatures peaked above 36 degrees Celsius on the Friday afternoon, and the campsite offered little shade in the middle of the day. The sea provided the only genuine relief, and the beach was packed from about noon until the stages opened each evening.
The Verdict
FIB 2022 was not just a good festival. It was a genuinely historic one. The combination of the pandemic return, the new format and a bill that delivered across all three nights made it an edition that attendees will talk about for a long time. If you were there, you already know. If you were not, it is the festival that made a lot of people book their tickets for the following year without waiting to see the lineup.