Dynamo Open Air

Dynamo Open Air was a festival in the Netherlands held (almost) every year since 1986, until 2005. Originally held to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Dynamo rock club in Eindhoven, it has grown exponentially since then, and from a 5,000-person attendance in the Dynamo parking lot, it had grown to over 110,000 attendees in 1995. However, this caused too much pressure on the Dutch infrastructure, and the festival had to shrink to a maximum of 60,000 visitors for 1996. From there it went downhill, mostly because the festival could not find a permanent venue. In 1999 Dynamo Open Air was held on a former rubbish dump near Eindhoven, and the following year it went to the Goffertpark in Nijmegen. That was the first time DOA was held outside the province of Noord-Brabant, and it was for the first time in years that the festival had to shrink down to only one day. The previous years it had always been a two- or three-day festival.

In May 1998, guest band Death recorded stock footage of their performance. Three years later, in an effort to raise money to pay for Chuck Schuldiner's cancer treatment, the footage was limitedly released in October 2001 by Nuclear Blast on CD and DVD formats under the name Live In Eindhoven, two months before Schuldiner's ultimate demise.

In 2001, the organisation thought they had found a site where the festival could return on a yearly basis, near the town of Lichtenvoorde. However, the threat of Foot-and-mouth disease caused trouble, and Dynamo Open Air had to be cancelled. In 2002 it returned, at the site of the Bospop festival, but 2003 was another year without a Dynamo festival. For 2004, the festival returned to Nijmegen, at the same location where it took place in 2000. In 2005, the festival used the site of the Dauwpop festival, and the re-formed Anthrax dominated the stage. There was no festival in 2008.

In an attempt to blow new life into the festival, the current organization of youth-center Dynamo decided to change the festival's name from Dynamo Open Air to Dynamo Outdoor. In 2008, the first Dynamo Outdoor festival was held in the centre of Eindhoven, with bands such as Mad Sin, Anathema and Born From Pain performing. The following year, in August 2009, Dynamo Outdoor was again held in Eindhoven. Bands like Destine, Stahlzeit, Asphyx, Textures, The butcher and Municipal waste attended the festival.