Festival report: NEXUS Nerd Rock Festival 2025

This summer was intense in a lot of senses. This includes visiting a few festivals, and one of them stood out in a certain way: this year was the first time the NEXUS took place in its current form. NEXUS is a mix of convention and festival, which makes it somehow unique. I went there this year and here’s how I perceived the first edition of this festival. Spoiler alert: I think it was cool.

The concept: Con meets festival

As the name NEXUS Nerd Rock Festival already suggests, NEXUS aims at nerds. In very very general. There are quite a few hobbies or special interests that people who identify as „nerd“ might share, which include gaming (PC/console as well as pen & paper/board games), Anime/Manga, fantasy and rock/metal music. So the overall idea of the event was to take all these and combine them into one big event.

Hence, NEXUS came with

• A stage for concerts of rock/metal bands, with extra focus on bands that play nerdy music, eg covers of Anime intros or gaming
• A pen & paper area
• A gaming area for a) a few „modern“ games and some retro games, covering both consoles & PC
• A medieval/fantasy outdoor area including vendors as well as camps (including both medieval and wasteland/post-apocalyptic settings)
• Another stage with mixed programme & 2 panel stages
• Access to a park for cosplay photos
• A market area with mostly small businesses and artists from Germany and very few vendors of merch or Japanese food

The stage programme included cosplay catwalks & a competition, concerts of acts that are connected to gaming or anime/manga, discussion panels, karaoke and other fun acts. The panels revolved around topics like cosplay, streaming etc.

The overall concept sounded super interesting for people like me, who basically love EVERYTHING that’s been considered here, so I was hyped.

The location: Agra Messepark Leipzig

Initially, NEXUS was supposed to take place in a congress centre (?) in Schkeuditz near Leipzig. And initially, the first edition was planned for 2024. Due to different circumstances, the event was postponed by a year and then came with a new location: the Agra Messepark in Leipzig is the old trade fair ground of the city of Leipzig. This means that the halls are pretty old and fairly outdated. It also means that there is lots of space available.

Generally speaking, the location was well chosen for the event. There are several big halls, one of them hosted the Hero Stage, the panel stages, the vendor and the gaming area all at once. There was a smaller hall used for the pen and paper area and another one where you could find the Titanium Stage, which hosted most concerts. In the foyer, they sold festival merch, band merch and put up a table for signing sessions. And there was a huge outdoor area where you could find food stalls, the entire fantasy/wasteland area and you could access the cosplay park (if you were able to find it…).

There was also space for camping next to the halls. If you didn’t want to camp, you could easily find a hotel, hostel or other kind of accommodation in Leipzig. Of course the old trade fair ground is easy to reach via public transport, although you have to keep in mind that it’s at the border of the city, almost in Markkleeberg, so it takes about 20 minutes to get there from the main station. But public transport in Leipzig in general usually works quite well, so getting there was fairly simple.

So venue-wise one could say the area was old, but charming. I can’t judge the cosplay park because we didn’t find it 😅 and one thing that was a little annoying was that when we tried to get there, we were not allowed to go back the same way, but had to walk around the entire fair buildings back to the main entrance.

Nevertheless, I think the venue suited its purpose. I was surprised by how good the sound was during the concerts at the Titanium Stage. The Hero Stage… Not so much. The hall was simply a bit too big and there was a little too much echo.

But given the fact that the area was huge, it never felt crowded. Actually it felt like there weren’t that many people there at all. You could move around freely and that was, in comparison to other conventions or trade fairs, really nice.

The programme: Hero Stage

We didn’t attend that many events at the Hero Stage, but those we saw were real highlights. On Friday, right after our arrival, we watched the concert of Baumann Bergmann Pokinson. If you’re familiar with German point and click adventures from around 2010-ish, Poki could be a familiar name to you. Jan Müller-Michaelis, aka Poki, was one of the founders of the German video game developer (now publisher) Daedalic Entertainment and the man who created awesome games like Edna & Harvey: The Breakout (Edna bricht aus), its follow-up Edna & Harvey: Harvey’s New Eyes and the Deponia series. A few years ago, he retreated from making and publishing video games. With his band Baumann Bergmann Pokinson he mostl y performs humourous songs – including the intro of Harvey’s New Eyes, Nadel und Faden. It was a delight to see their show. I’ve attended Poki’s solo concert at the Daedalic booth at the gamescom in 2013, so I knew some of the songs from back then. After their show, there was a little discussion with him about his games and the good old days. For me as someone who loved these games enough to cosplay Edna and Goal, it was a nice kick of nostalgia.

I got my second dose of nostalgia on Saturday while attending the Anime in Concert performance of Petra and Julia Scheeser. To non-Germans, both names will be rather unfamiliar. For German millennials with an Anime fan history, Petra Scheeser should ring a bell, as she was the singer of several German anime intros. Some of them were incredibly popular, such as the intros to One Piece or Detective Conan. She performed together with her daughter Julia, who not only took over for a few popular songs that were not recorded by her mother, but also performed some Disney songs. Germans who have seen the new non-animated Aladdin adaptation know Julia Scheeser’s voice as the German singing voice of princess Jasmine. The entire performance was great and energetic and brought so many childhood memories back that it was impossible not to enjoy it.

There were also other concerts at the Hero Stage which I mostly didn’t attend because they were in the evening or overlapped with performances at the Titanium stage, but there was also other stuff happening there, like the Cosplay catwalks, a Cosplay competition and two incredibly popular karaoke slots. The first one was such a blast that they added another slot on Sunday and it was great fun to watch the people perform.

Furthermore, there was the Infield Masters (?), where three influencers/streamers (I remember AnniQuinn, a German cosplayer and streamer I mostly know from her appearance in a Versengold music video, and IFA, a streamer I hadn’t heard of before) played games like flunkyball, beer pong and Who am I against three volunteers who could win tickets for next year’s NEXUS. It was kinda entertaining to watch, mostly because IFA was adorably scatterbrained and seemed super sympathetic.

The programme: Titanium Stage

At Titanium Stage you could find performances of Metal(core) and Pop Punk bands. The line up was quite nice. I didn’t attend that many shows as there were artists I just didn’t vibe with (for example I gave Lonely Spring a listen because I knew one of their songs from their application to the German Eurovision pre selection, but they weren’t my jam) and there were a few artists I just didn’t want to see because their morals don’t align with mine.

BUT there were also some great artists that I saw:

Venues

I think this was the fourth time I’ve seen Venues live. They’re the type of band I never really listen to when I’m at home, but go see live whenever I have the chance to do so. I might’ve mentioned earlier that I’m not the biggest fan of Robin’s shouting, it’s just a very personal issue with the sound of his voice, but otherwise I truly love Venues‘ music and I’m a big fan of their singer Lela. They’re great live performers and some of their songs are just real live bangers that are fun to dance to. They’re a bit of my weird love story and at NEXUS, they really kicked asses.

Also, Venues have incredibly beautiful merch designs! Honestly, their shirts are some of the most beautiful ones I’ve ever seen merch-wise!

Self Deception

People who know me know about my deep, unhealthy love for Self Deception. They were the main reason why we decided to attend NEXUS, as initially we had returned our tickets for 2024 when the event got postponed, as it didn’t quite align with my work schedule. When Self Deception were announced, we bought new tickets and just kept praying that they would play on Saturday or Sunday. Thankfully they did.

For me, Self Deception are an incredible live band. I haven’t met anyone who said after a show that they didn’t like it, but I know a few people who came to their shows not really knowing much of their music and went back home as fans. Their stage presence is insane and their shows are a big big party. So was the show at NEXUS, although I gotta admit that I missed their crew member Janine a lot (love you, Janine 💕 – she’s usually the one throwing balloons and stuff into the crowd :D)

Their music touches my heart every single time, so it’s no big surprise that once again I started crying during their set. Honestly, if you ever have the chance to see them live, go. Do it. You won’t regret it.

Samurai Pizza Cats

They were reason number 2 why we decided to go this year. The Samurai Pizza Cats are similar to Self Deception when it comes to their live performance: energetic and convincing. Their shows are hot and definitely a hardcore workout. This time, Daniel Haniß was missing – I guess he was busy with Electric Callboy summer shows – but his replacement Fabio did an amazing job. Somehow they played longer than the schedule said (I think they were scheduled for 45 minutes but played a full hour set) and they still didn’t have time for the pizza competition before Pizza Suicide. But all in all their set was amazing. One could say they were a real highlight.

Only downside: I personally had hoped that Maria Lessing of Future Palace would join them for Freakshow, as they were coming next after SPC. But I guess she was probably already warming up. I would’ve loved hearing the song together with her.

Future Palace

I’ve already mentioned them. Future Palace were the Sunday headliner and hence the closing act of NEXUS 2025. And they did a great job. I’ve seen them quite a few times already, this was the second time this year, and I’d say that this show was my personal favourite of Future Palace shows I’ve seen so far.

For me, Maria Lessing is one of the best female metalcore singers these days. My opinion. She’s incredible. Her stage performance is so damn powerful that I’m blown away each time. Also, on a very personal level, the lyrics of quite a lot of Future Palace songs are hitting very hard close to home, so they were the second band this weekend where I ended up crying my eyes out. It was intense.

I still hear people claim that Future Palace are not a good live band, and most of these people judge that based on early days of the band. I can only recommend to go see them again. Their development is massive and they’re so damn worth it.

Remaining program

There was a lot to do in between, so here’s a small recap of what else we’ve seen and done at NEXUS:

• The gaming area was quite nice and there were lots of options. There was one spot with a variety of gaming consoles throughout the time, no matter if Atari, Commodore or Nintendo. I think there were also Playstation 1 and 2, but I don’t remember seeing Xbox (I’m not an Xbox person anyway). There was another area with a variety of PC games, usually demo versions. In the retro area, you could play Just Dance, there were Arcade machines, you could sit down and chill and there were a few Indie developers introducing their games. So all in all there was a lot to do and there weren’t support long queues or waiting times.
• The vendor area was a bit small and personally I felt like a lot of the small businesses and artists there didn’t make much money that weekend. I felt really sorry for them because there weren’t many customers. Somehow there wasn’t half as much attention on them as you’d see on other conventions. The selection was quite nice though, although in some cases the offer was maybe a bit too similar. For example there were a lot of vendors offering fantasy-inspired jewellery like headpieces with fairy wings or decorated horns or cat ears. And I think artists who mainly offered illustrations and prints really had a hard time. There was also pretty cool stuff available like pixel graphics of a variety of cities and I personally bought a few pairs of socks, including some with capybaras. But all in all I think they will have to go through the concept again because the way it went this year I could imagine that not many artists would return and that’s kinda sad.
• There was also a local tattoo studio with 3 or 4 artists offering tattoos at the convention, but you had to be quick if you wanted to get an appointment in some cases. I want to state though that I was happy to see unique designs because at some cons (especially tattoo conventions), all you get is stolen Pinterest designs.
• There were a few info stalls, e.g. you could register as bone marrow donor, there was a stall of Kein Bock auf Nazis and an info stall of Corefest, a one day festival in Stuttgart in November
• They had signing sessions, but the organisation seemed a little spontaneous. Nothing had been announced beforehand, it was only announced on Friday. Funny enough: Self Deception came with laminated cutouts of their band logo 😂 also there was a bit of confusion about the queueing for Self Deception and Jan Hegenberg which was a bit of an organisational issue they should work on.
• There were two panel stages with several panels. I didn’t attend any except for the signing session of Petra and Julia Scheeser because the one panel I was interested in had to be cancelled when the host didn’t show up without further notice 🥲 another panel on special effects make up had to be cancelled just before it was supposed to take place because the organisers suddenly noticed that some of the pictures were too explicit to be shown on an openly accessible panel stage. So concerning the panels, I think they need to work on the concept again.
• Outside, there was a metal yoga offer. Unfortunately Saturday and Sunday were super rainy, so I don’t really know if the yoga took place.
• Generally, the outside offers (fantasy/wasteland) were pretty much fucked by the weather because there really were LITRES of rain falling from the sky.. Really sad.
• Personally, I had been looking forward to maybe finding some cosplayers to photograph. Unfortunately there weren’t many outside of the participants of the cosplay contest. I guess one big issue here was that there was an anime/manga convention in Chemnitz the same weekend and for those who attended NEXUS to see the concerts, cosplay wasn’t really an option. At least for us the fact that we wanted to see the concerts was one reason why we decided not to dress up although we had Alice in Wonderland-costumes ready. I just wasn’t very keen on wearing a wig and a dress that made me cry while sewing together the bits of organza in a moshpit.

Finally: the food

For me, food is always an important issue at festivals and conventions. Food and eating are a major issue for me. I have food intolerances, I am a bit of a picky eater and I can easily have meltdowns over the availability of food.

The selection at NEXUS wasn’t massive – but it was pretty damn good. As you could expect from an event in Leipzig, there was a really good offer of vegetarian and vegan food. Not all food trucks and stalls had visible allergen lists, but I could always ask and was given helpful answers. I remember stuff like Ramen, fried noodles, Handbrot, Käsespätzle, cheese döner and there might have been burgers and fries. Also there was ice cream, coffee and hot or iced chocolate, bubble tea and cocktails.

The food I had (Handbrot and a cheese döner is what I remember) was delicious and of a very good quality and the prices were fair.

Conclusion

I really enjoyed the weekend at NEXUS. For the first time it was a really nice event. I want to highlight the really transparent communication and the thoughtfulness of the organisation in advance. The event itself came with a few weaknesses, like missing or misleading signs, minor issues like the mentioned confusion while queueing for signing sessions or issues with the panels. I’m sure that the organisers will be able to take the criticism, work through it and make improvements where necessary.