Winiary Bookings

The act that is not an act

Winiary Bookings has no discography, no line-up and nobody who walks on at nine. It is a concert agency, and the reason its name turns up on ticketing sites next to the bands it sells is a filing quirk: the promoter is attached to every event it puts on sale, so aggregators index it as a performer with a calendar of its own. The calendar is real even when the act is not. Songkick currently carries 86 forthcoming dates under the name across two countries, Poland and Belgium, beginning with a Voodoo Club show in Warsaw on 20 September 2026 and a Klub Zaścianek date in Kraków the night after.

Behind the name are Tomasz Masłowski and Bartosz Stobiński, childhood friends who came up through the hardcore and punk scene and started the company in Poznań in 2012. The agency still describes itself in those terms — two people whose hobby became the job — and the roots show in what it programmes. Guitar music in the broad sense sits at the centre: metal, rock, hardcore, punk and metalcore, with rap, electronic, alternative, pop and acoustic bookings arranged around it.

Silent Screams, and a clash they were not meant to win

Stobiński set out the origin story in an interview with Magazyn Gitarzysta published on 16 April 2020. He had spent four years at the promoter P.W. Events, which he called a school of life; his partner had come through the Go Ahead agency. Winiary began as a side project meant to prop up the local scene, and its first event was a Silent Screams show that landed on the same night as Bonecrusher Fest in Warsaw. The smaller room filled and the bigger event lost money. Stobiński described that night as the point at which the pair decided the thing might work as a business rather than a favour to friends.

The catalogue widened quickly. Hardcore and metalcore came first, then rap, which Stobiński pushed internally against some resistance after picking up on Quebonafide around 2014 and 2015. By the end of the decade the agency had handled multiple Parkway Drive runs, Behemoth's Rzeczpospolita Niewierna show in Poznań in 2016, Anthrax in Wrocław and a sold-out Little Big night at EXPO XXI in Warsaw. In the same conversation he offered a blunt reading of the domestic market: Poland had no home-grown rock or metal star to set against Quebonafide or Taco Hemingway, because rap is cheaper to make, quicker to develop and cheaper to sell tickets for.

That interview was conducted during the first lockdown, with the diary wiped and no income coming in. Stobiński said the company had kept its staff on and had roughly 60 concerts pencilled in for October and November, none of them certain. The business that came out the other side was considerably larger than the one that went in.

What the diary looks like

The agency now puts its own figure at around 300 concerts a year across Poland and the Baltic states, and runs the whole production chain rather than just the booking: national promotion, press, security, technical crew, staging, sound, lighting, catering and transport. Its list of artists brought to Poland runs from Alice Cooper, Dream Theater, The Cult, Anthrax, Rancid and Cradle of Filth through to Louis Tomlinson and Tash Sultana, alongside domestic work with Lady Pank, Bajm, sanah, Guzior and The Dumplings. The spread is wide enough that the guitar identity is a centre of gravity rather than a rule.

The recent listings give a sense of the working rhythm. In August 2026 the agency ran Geordie Greep in Poznań and Alestorm with Metal De Facto in Szczecin on the same night, 10 August, Alestorm again in Lublin on the 11th, Agnostic Front in Kraków on the 13th and The Virginmarys in Warsaw on the 14th; a Rose Tattoo date in Kraków on 16 August is marked cancelled. Double-booking is routine — 1 October 2026 has one show at Klub Progresja in Warsaw and another at Klub Łącznik in Wrocław — with Tama in Poznań on the 2nd and Hydrozagadka in Warsaw on the 5th. On eBilet, 21 events listed under the company between 27 September and 16 October 2026 start at 102.90 zł.

Summer Punch, and the step up to programming

The most significant recent development is that Winiary stopped supplying other people's festivals and built one. Summer Punch Festival ran its first edition on 18 and 19 June 2026 at Letnia Scena Progresji, the open-air site at Fort Wola in Warsaw, across two stages roughly five minutes apart — the Summer Stage and the Punch Stage. Day one ran from 15:00 with Rain City Drive and took in House of Protection, Catch Your Breath, Silent Planet, Set It Off, P.O.D. at 17:45, Landmvrks, Bilmuri, Babymetal at 20:15 and Bad Omens closing. Day two held Zero 9:36, Dead by April, Touché Amoré, Man With a Mission, Wargasm, Yonaka, Smash Into Pieces, Alexisonfire, Show Me The Body, Palaye Royale, Don Broco and Three Days Grace.

Reviews on 20 June were favourable about the booking and mixed about the detail. EskaROCK marked the debut a five-plus, praising a bill built around bands defining current heavy music rather than around veterans, while noting flat sound during Set It Off, microphone trouble for Catch Your Breath, a thin visual presentation and ten-song set from Babymetal, and a Bad Omens headline set of fifteen songs that included five instrumental interludes. Metalnews recorded the same technical problems plus a drone striking Silent Planet's vocalist, and praised the turnarounds between stages, the free water and the signing sessions while criticising congestion around the food trucks and merchandise queues. Both noted that Bad Omens drew fans to the barrier from early in the afternoon.

The organisers have already committed to a second edition, moving to three days on 17 to 19 June 2027 — an expansion decided on the strength of a first outing rather than a proven audience.

Standing, September 2026

Speaking to Going in an interview published on 10 February 2026, Masłowski and Stobiński called 2025 their most intense year to date, with over 300 concerts delivered. Masłowski argued against the idea that electronic music was displacing gigs in Poland, describing instead a strong return to guitar music at arena and stadium scale. Stobiński's account of the other end of the market was harder: economic pressure is reaching audiences, who respond by choosing one or two hall or stadium nights a year, which drains attendance from small club shows and makes the 50 to 60 zł ticket that a developing act needs difficult to justify.

The same conversation set out the 2026 plan and the reasoning behind it. Bad Omens was the example they kept returning to, an act they had first booked into a 400-capacity room and were now selling out halls with. Turnstile, by contrast, drew around 1,500 in Poland despite far wider media attention, which they read as evidence that Polish audiences commit to an artist late, once the name has broken through. The diary they flagged for 2026 included Sean Paul at Torwar on 20 May, Lewis Capaldi at Orange Warsaw Festival on 29 May, Breaking Benjamin's first Polish show in June, a long-pursued Garbage booking and a three-night Żabson residency finishing at EXPO XXI.

Fourteen years in, the shape of the business is settled: a Poznań company selling a national circuit, weighted towards Warsaw but running regularly through Kraków, Poznań, Wrocław, Gdańsk, Łódź, Lublin, Toruń and Szczecin, with a Belgian date on the books and a festival of its own to defend next summer.