Italy-Based Kappa FuturFestival Debuts in Mexico This Weekend in a Crowded Market

Kappa FuturFestival will hold its first edition outside Turin, Italy, when FuturFestival Mexico takes place Nov. 13-14 at Parque Fundidora in Monterrey.

The lineup includes Âme b2b Marcel Dettman, Moodymann b2b Carl Craig, Carlita, Chloé Caillet, Diplo, Damian Lazarus, Dennis Cruz, Ki/Ki, Omri., Skream, Vintage Culture and Maceo Plex b2b Tiga, among others.

Organizers chose Monterrey in part because Parque Fundidora shares an industrial history with Turin’s Parco Dora, where Kappa has taken place for the last 17 years. Parco Dora, once home to a Fiat steel-making facility and a tire manufacturing plant, was renovated into a park. Parque Fundidora, a former steel and iron foundry and the first of its kind in Latin America, has undergone a similar transformation.

Parque Fundidora now hosts events ranging from marathons and fashion shows to large festivals, including Tecate Pa’l Norte. That festival draws roughly 100,000 attendees and will next take place 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.”

Turin-based Movement Entertainment operates Kappa FuturFestival. Mazzoleni founded the company with Maurizio “Juni” Vitale, and they now run it with third partner Gian Luca Brignone. Movement/Kappa partnered with Mexico City dance event producer Lostnights for the Mexican edition.

Lostnights produces events in Mexico and elsewhere, including the Tulum-based Day Zero brand, which has editions in Brazil, Bali and other locations. Its other events include shows at Tulum venue Tehmplo and headlining performances by international artists in Mexico.

Lostnights founder Carlos López tells Billboard that the site and Mexico’s dance music audience helped bring Kappa to the country. “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.”

Dance was Mexico’s fifth-largest genre by on-demand official streams from Jan. 2 through Nov. 5, 2026, according to Luminate, behind Latin, pop, rock and R&B/hip-hop. Dance tracks generated 16.67 billion on-demand streams in Mexico during that period, up 6.9% from the same period a year earlier.

International dance event brands are already active in Mexico. Insomniac Events’ EDC has held a Mexico City edition since 2014, and Ultra Music Festival started one there in 2017. Belgium-based Tomorrowland hosts its CORE concept in Tulum. Ibiza-based Circoloco has held shows across Mexico and will stage a stadium event in Mexico City later this month, days after Germany-based techno festival Time Warp holds its first Mexican edition in the city.

Laughing, López says he and his team “are figuring out” whether they can succeed in the crowded market. But he and the Kappa organizers are confident they can attract an audience and help the genre grow, given Mexico’s size and the distances between its dance music hubs. López says dance music is still often considered “taboo” in the country. “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.

Lostnights has built trust with audiences around Mexico over the past 20 years, while Kappa’s reputation helped organizers assemble the lineup for the first edition.

Kappa was founded around Futurism, the early 20th-century art movement that began in Italy. Artist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti developed ideas about automation and electronics. As Mazzoleni and his partners were developing the festival, Futurism was celebrating its 100-year anniversary, and the connection between the movement and music made by machines became Kappa’s founding concept.

Kappa was successful in Italy for years, but its international reputation grew largely after the pandemic, when more attendees began traveling from abroad. “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.” López and his team traveled from Mexico to Italy in 2024 to attend Kappa and discuss a partnership on a new edition.

Mazzoleni says he is taking a long-term approach to the expansion. “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 says FuturFestival Mexico is drawing attendees from across Mexico, South America, the United States and Europe, as well 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.”

The festival will use one stage on Friday and four on Saturday. “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].”

As the event goes international, Mazzoleni says he feels the same excitement about trying something new that he felt in Kappa’s early days in 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.”

Source: Billboard