50 Cent and Charlie XCX headlined Parklife on a Serious Stages 25m TZ roof, with a new Big Top stage, courtesy of Serious Stages, added to the festival for 2025.
Serious answered the promoter’s request to increase the capacity of Parklife’s main ‘Valley Stage’ and supplied the platform for the new Big Top Stage, continuing a long history of supplying stages and buildings to Manchester’s premier dance festival.
Parklife’s event production partners, Engine No 4, have constantly refreshed the site and infrastructure since the festival moved to Heaton Park in 2012. For 2025, they entrusted Serious Stages to support their delivery of a new main stage to accommodate larger headline productions and for an expanded audience.
Production Manager Tommy Sheals-Barrett, Engine No 4, said: “We needed to increase capacity in the Valley area for our stand-alone Friday show, which meant some significant changes to the stage position. We also needed to increase rigging capacity, storage space and dock space to deal with the size and scope of the touring productions coming through. The Serious TZ roof gave us exactly what we needed. Abbey (Thomas) was excellent during the advance and the on-site team were great to deal with too.”
The 25m four-post TZ Roof, flanked by 9.6m wide goal-posts, gave an impressive 50m frontage, with Parklife scrim branding, carrying the giant LED screens either side of the stage and at the rear of the performance area. The roof also carried the technical PA and lighting equipment, with two ‘underworlds’ under the stage providing technical working areas and valuable storage areas.
The three-storey front-of-house tower accommodated sound mixers on level one, lighting desks on level two, with the upper storey fitted out as a VIP hospitality bar for Parklife’s main sponsor, Rockstar Energy Drinks.
Serious Stages also installed a 25m wide x 15m stage platform, with loading ramps, into the new giant Big Top Stage, which saw packed fans partying to a stellar line-up of DJ’s throughout the weekend.
60,000 fans per day partied to Rudimental, Jorja Smith and Rapper 50 Cent’s legendary Saturday sets, then the Serious site team worked overnight to add a thrust to the front of the stage, along with steps for artists to access the pit area, ready for Sunday’s sets, including Confidence Man, Peggy Gou and headliner, Charlie XCX.
