Last weekend, after months of hard graft, Home Again finally opened its doors for a 40hr blowout with Chris Stussy, Solomun, Ryan Elliott, Eris Drew and more.

Festivals are the biggest gamble in events. Get it right and there's real money to be made; get it wrong, usually thanks to the weather, and it can spell financial ruin.

The Monday before, the forecast turned ugly for Sunday. Our Main Stage is outdoor, so bad weather doesn't just mean rain, it means poor ticket sales (as people buy last minute these days), production chaos, no shows, low bar spend. After a lot of back and forth, we made the call to move the Sunday Main Stage indoors.

Sunday came, and the sky stayed blue. Did we move it inside for nothing? Luckily the heavens opened at 7pm. I'd never been so happy to see rain.

Weather drama aside, we were facing another problem. Two big names had dropped out, and our headliner, Chris Stussy, the one everyone had bought tickets for, was stuck waiting for his delayed flight to take off. We were refreshing departure boards, looking at alternative routes, doing the maths on arrival time vs. stage time over and over. If he didn't make it, we had no headliner to fall back on, and people would certainly be expecting refunds. We paced and prayed, and finally we got the message from his tour manager that the flight was taking off. Now it was a straight race against the clock.

He landed in Berlin, came straight to the venue (no time to freshen up at the hotel first). And boom, he hit the stage with 2 minutes to spare.

Turns out playing indoors ended up creating something special. Indoors meant no phones (Berlin), so everyone fully got lost in the moment. You could tell everyone, especially Chris, was having the best time. In the end it all came together, just about, but it was another reminder that in festivals, you can plan all you like: the weather, and the flights, won't always listen.