C2C Festival (Club To Club)

The tradition & historical record

C2C Festival (also known as Club To Club) is an avant-pop music festival and the largest indoor music festival in Italy. Founded in 2002 by the cultural association Situazione Xplosiva, it takes place annually in Turin between late October and early November, coinciding with the Piedmontese Contemporary Art Week. The festival has been described by the international press as one of the most important music events in Italy and Europe, while Pitchfork has characterised it as the "ne-plus-ultra of avant-garde eclecticism". Artists who have performed at the festival including A. G. Cook, Aphex Twin, Arca, Autechre, Beach House, Bicep, Blood Orange, Caribou, Caroline Polachek, Caterina Barbieri, Flying Lotus, Franco Battiato, James Blake, Jamie xx, Junun (ft. Jonny Greenwood, Shye Ben Tzur & The Rajasthan Express), King Krule, Kode9, Kraftwerk, Nicolas Jaar, SOPHIE, Thom Yorke and Yves Tumor. ¹

Club To Club was founded in Turin in 2002 by the local cultural association Situazione Xplosiva. The original concept consisted of a network of events across several clubs in the city, allowing access to multiple venues with a single ticket. In 2007, the festival established a central hub at Lingotto Fiere, a complex created from a former FIAT factory, which has since hosted the main nights of the event. Ten years later, OGR Torino (Officine Grandi Riparazioni) was added as an additional venue. ¹

During its early years, the programme focused primarily on DJ sets – featuring artists such as Jeff Mills (2002, 2007, 2011), Tiga (2005), Ricardo Villalobos (2006) and Laurent Garnier (2009). Over time, the festival gradually expanded the number of live performances. Notable events from this period include the performance by Plaid with the Southbank Gamelan Players (2010) and the first Italian show by Flying Lotus (2012). The same period also saw the first Italian appearance by Jamie xx (2010). Starting from 2012 the festival held regular satellites events in London. ¹

In 2014 the festival introduced a two-day format, expanding beyond Lingotto Fiere to include historically and culturally significant venues across the city, such as Teatro Carignano, the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory and the Reggia of Venaria. From 2017, OGR Torino (Officine Grandi Riparazioni) became a permanent part of the programme. During these years the festival hosted Franco Battiato with the Joe Patti's Experimental Group (2014), a performance by Thom Yorke (2015), and an audiovisual show by Arca and Jesse Kanda (2016). In 2017 Kraftwerk presented their show 3-D The Catalogue 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 across eight consecutive concerts. In 2018 Aphex Twin performed at the festival. ¹

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the festival was temporarily suspended in its regular in-person format and replaced by 'C0C – The Festival As A Performance', a digital streaming event in 2020, followed by a reduced-format edition in 2021. ¹

In recent editions, the festival has hosted artists from a wide range of musical scenes and genres, including Arca, A. G. Cook, Autechre, billy woods, Blood Orange, Caroline Polachek, Caterina Barbieri, Dean Blunt, King Krule, Nala Sinephro, Oklou, and Yung Lean & Bladee. In 2023, the bilingual publication We Call It Avant-Pop was released, documenting the first twenty editions of the festival and its cultural evolution. The book includes contributions by Simon Reynolds, Steve Goodman, Jazz Monroe, Max Dax, Alberto Campo, Carlo Antonelli and Valerio Mattioli. During the same period, the festival was included for three consecutive editions among the major international music festivals listed by Pitchfork. In 2025, the first edition of C2C Festival NYC was held at the Knockdown Center in New York City. Since 2022, the festival has recorded significant growth in attendance, reaching approximately 42,000 participants, with an international audience share of 40% reported in 2025. ¹

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “C2C Festival”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ¹

C2C Festival (Club To Club) is Pop music festival in Italy, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ²