Alan Simms, promoter, has launched Emerge Music Festival, a 20,000 cap, two-day multi-stage outdoor event.

Emerge will be presented by the teams behind Belfast club brand Shine and Belsonic Festival, and will take place this August (27 and 28) in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

The first year will see more than 40 acts across three stages, featuring bespoke sound, lighting and AV installations – the festival will showcase a “high-quality production and immersive audience experience”.

Simms, co-promoter and director of Emerge Music Festival, said: “The electronic music scene is one that has grown steadily in Belfast over the 30-odd years that I’ve been promoting in the city with my Shine brand, and it’s grown exponentially over the last few years. Belfast is one of the most fertile and dynamic scenes of its kind in the UK or Ireland. We’ve promoted many large-scale outdoor electronic events in recent years but always wanted to do a huge multi-stage event of this kind. Feedback from our audience suggested that a huge appetite exists for a unique production of this kind in Northern Ireland. We’re lucky to have some of the world’s biggest names in dance music on our inaugural line-up of EMERGE Music Festival, most of whom we’ve been working with since their very first club shows in the country.”