Eight years after the last Bread&&Butter festival, Zalando is returning to its home city with Access All Areas—a free, two-day festival bringing together fashion, music and culture, headlined by the British singer-songwriter RAYE.
Berlin has never needed much encouragement to throw different scenes together under one roof. For three summers in the late 2010s, Bread&&Butter by Zalando was an unmissable fixture of the city’s cultural calendar: a weekend where runway shows, live music and street style collided, and where you could walk out wearing something you’d just seen on stage. Now, after a hiatus since 2018, Zalando is bringing that spirit back under a new name. Taking place on 24-25 April, 2027, Access All Areas will span two of Berlin’s best-known and loved venues, Station Berlin and Tempodrom, for two days of fashion, music and culture. Zalando is positioning the festival as its biggest cultural investment yet. RAYE will headline the inaugural edition, with up to 40,000 people expected to attend. It’s also a continuation of something Europe has been missing for a minute.
To understand AAA, you have to understand what came before it. Bread&&Butter began in 2001 as a trade show in Cologne, a meeting point for denim, streetwear and sportswear at a time when those worlds were still treated as separate—almost frictional—fields. It moved between Berlin and Barcelona before settling into the hangars of Tempelhof Airport in 2009, where it became a twice-yearly fixture of the fashion industry. It was always industry-only, but Zalando soon changed that.
After acquiring the brand in 2015, it reopened Bread&&Butter in September 2016 as a public event, built around a simple premise: fashion should be experienced by the people who actually wear it. The first edition drew more than 20,000 visitors. The second, in 2017, ran under the motto “BOLD”, with shows from HUGO, Topshop and G-Star, a Vivienne Westwood exhibition, and talks featuring Adwoa Aboah and Wyclef Jean. By 2018, attendance had reached a record 35,000, with 43 brands and more than 100 product debuts across the weekend. Looking back, Bread&&Butter was early to almost everything the industry now takes for granted.
I remember being there in 2017, and the atmosphere felt unlike any other festival of its kind. FKA twigs headlined, then still at the beginning of her career, an artist who seemed to crystallise the sheer volume of new ideas circulating across the site. What struck me most was how actively people participated: fans weren’t simply watching culture happen around them, they were interacting with it, buying into it and becoming part of it. When Zalando called time on Bread&&Butter after the 2018 edition, the reasoning was that the event had reached its natural limits. A festival contained within one building, across one weekend, in one city could only reach so many people.
Eight years on, those limits look very different. The way we experience culture has changed dramatically. Livestreams, creator content and in-app drops mean a festival no longer has to end at the venue walls. More importantly, audiences no longer separate what they listen to from what they wear, watch or share. That’s the thinking behind the new name. Access All Areas isn’t a revival for nostalgia’s sake—it takes the legacy of Bread&&Butter and opens it up to a much wider audience. The idea is simple: if Bread&&Butter opened the doors, AAA is offering everyone a backstage pass.
“AAA is our love letter to Berlin, the city that shaped Zalando and the city where our story began,” says James Rothwell, SVP of Marketing at Zalando. “It’s where inspiration and entertainment meet culture in a way our customers can experience for themselves.”
So what can you expect?
Well, the headline booking sets the tone. RAYE, a four-time GRAMMY nominee and one of the most distinctive voices in music right now, is exactly the kind of artist AAA is built around: genre-defying, stylistically singular, and impossible to file under one heading. More acts will be announced in the coming months. Alongside her, 14 partner brands will build out the festival across fashion, footwear and beauty. Calvin Klein, adidas and Nike lead the line-up, joined by ASICS, Dr. Martens, lululemon, New Balance, On, Puma, Tommy Hilfiger and Vans. Beauty of Joseon, Kérastase and MAC will also bring beauty into the mix for the first time.
The access model is arguably the biggest shift. Tickets are free for members of Zalando Plus, the retailer’s complimentary loyalty programme, with access opening exclusively to members from January 2027. Signing up is free, but if you can’t make it to Berlin, AAA is designed to come to you: livestreams, content, the Zalando app and exclusive drops will carry the festival across Europe before, during and after the weekend.
Where Bread&&Butter eventually ran into its limits, AAA looks equipped to push past them.
Tickets to AAA are free for Zalando Plus members in participating markets, with access opening exclusively to its members from January 2027. Wherever customers are based, AAA will also be available to experience through livestreams, content and exclusive drops.' For tickets and more info, head here.
