Live: Loreen at 3Olympia Theatre, Dublin 2025
Two-time Eurovision winner Loreen visited Dublin for the second time in the last two years. As a big fan, I simply had to go see the Swedish queen again. And my camera as well!
Loreen’s concert in 2023 at The Academy was the reason I decided to get my concert camera. Since then, I’ve taken photos of many concerts and artists. When Loreen announced her tour last year and at my favorite 3Olympia Theatre, I was immediately excited.
I went to the concert with my friend D. and we had tickets to the Circle (we also sat there for Reneé Rapp a year ago). Unfortunately, there were Irish people sitting next to my friend. They kept getting up and going for drinks and to the bathroom. Literally even during Euphoria and Tattoo… I don’t understand why they went to that concert either. But we had a great view – 4th row.
Loreen had two support acts – Czech Thera and Polish representative at Eurovision 2024, Luna. I don’t know Thera at all, she’s too GenZ for me (aka young to know her), but she sounded good and she also covered Gracie Abrams. Luna was very good live and I was more interested in the songs I didn’t know than the Eurovision song.
Loreen came on stage 20 minutes later than advertised, but of course we always like to wait for Queen Loreen. The same friend and I were at The Academy together a year and a half ago, so we had a comparison with the current concert. I would like to point out that Loreen has very unconventional concerts in the sense that they are more of an artistic performance. At least that was the case in 2023, when she performed in her Eurovision Tattoo costume and had the microphone on her face rather than in her hand. Then she moved and danced in different ways. And it really was a performance.
This year in Dublin she wore black bell-bottomed pants and the armor from the cover of her single Forever. Absolutely amazing. On stage she had a kind of portal to the earth behind her, through which light flowed, adding to the performance. This time she had a microphone in her hand and all the songs had a very rave vibe. In 2023 she stuck more to the studio versions, on this tour she let the dancing go.
3Olympia Theatre is one of my favorite venues in Dublin, mainly because of the lighting, where you can really see what’s going on (see my photos of Fletcher, Reneé or Chappell). Loreen thought it was a challenge, probably because the lighting was very bad. For most of the concert you could hardly see her at all, because she was lit from behind, or because the spotlights flickered so fast that we preferred to close our eyes, how uncomfortable it was. It’s a shame, but I understand that it was supposed to help the arrangement of the music and create a great atmosphere for dancing.
If you don’t know anything about photography, I have an interesting thing for you. Artificially created lights have a frequency that we usually can’t see with our eyes. But cameras pick it up and it shows up as black bands across the photos. Which can’t be fixed. I have an antiflicker setting on my Canon that helps when taking photos and there are no black bands on the photos, but my little concert camera doesn’t have such a setting. All I can say is #FreeLoreen
Loreen was great live again and did not disappoint at all and I’m going again next time!
