Green Guardians 2026

IQ's annual list of the innovators and eco-warriors that are spearheading the move toward a more sustainable live events industry

FEATURED LIST By IQ | 1 September 2026

Welcome to IQ Magazine’s 2026 Green Guardians – our annual recognition of the companies, organisations, eco-warriors, events, and artists whom our readers believe are driving the live entertainment industry’s efforts toward a more sustainable future.

We hope the tireless work that each of our green guardians is doing can inspire many others to follow in their (carbon-reduced) footsteps.

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THE LIST

Festival Estéreo Picnic

Together with Páramo Impacta and Grupo Argos, we replaced traditional water-based counterweights with approx 85 tonnes of cement and 55 tonnes of sand, eliminating the use of nearly 140,000 litres of water

You.Smart.Thing.

Audience travel is consistently one of the largest and hardest parts of an event’s carbon footprint to influence, made by thousands of small individual decision

Echoes of Earth

The Octo Jones was a circular stage created by Echoes of Earth using recovered, recycled, reused, and rented elements across its construction and production

Dutch Barrier Services

Cees Muurling of Dutch Barrier Services wanted to create a barrier system that best suited the needs of tours, festivals, venues, and events

AEG Presents

Attacking the struggle of waste management through careful planning and thorough on-site implementation of our industry-leading recycling system led to us breaking records

Rotterdam Ahoy

Ahoy is located in a socially and economically disadvantaged neighbourhood, where residents and businesses face a range of interconnected challenges

Øyafestivalen

Øyafestivalen’s sustainability work is not just about our overall goals or documentation of our footprint

UBS Arena

Sending compostable materials to landfills releases methane, a potent greenhouse gas produced when organic materials break down without oxygen

Johan Cruijff ArenA

Beef is a major source of greenhouse gases, so with our catering partner, Levy Europe, we looked for alternatives

Stagetruck

Stagetruck believe in green innovation and moving forward as a business. So it seemed like a logical next step to establish an electric fleet as soon as we could

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