With a Liverpool FC victory parade, a huge Radio One festival and maritime celebrations - the planning for the next week in the city has been off the scale
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Fans celebrate with the Liverpool team during the open-top bus parade to celebrate winning the UEFA Champions League on June 2, 2019 in Liverpool
Fans celebrate with the Liverpool team during the open-top bus parade to celebrate winning the UEFA Champions League on June 2, 2019 in Liverpool
(Image: Liverpool FC via Getty Images)
Liverpool knows a thing or two about throwing big events where hundreds of thousands of people flood into the city. You only have to look at The Giants Spectacular or more recently the now legendary hosting of the Eurovision Song Contest to know that this is a city that excels when it puts on a massive show for the public.
But this coming weekend and the days that follow it, all of the expertise that the city has to offer will be put to the test when not one, not two, but three enormous events are held in Liverpool - and all the major logistical challenges that they will bring along.
Across Friday, Saturday and Sunday, BBC Radio One's Big Weekend will bring some of the world's biggest music stars to Sefton Park - along with an expected 100,000 fans.
Then following day, on Monday, May 26, Liverpool Football Club's Premier League Champions will parade along a 15km route around the city, with hundreds of thousands expected to line the route - including the spectacular moment the team bus arrives on The Strand.
And as if this wasn't enough, Monday will also see the return of the Queen Anne to the River Mersey for the 185th anniversary of iconic ship brand Cunard. The ship will be in situ to provide a glamorous nautical backdrop to the trophy parade, before a visit from Princess Anne the following day.
For the team at Culture Liverpool, the city council's culture department, the multitude of events across such a short-space of time has represented a huge challenge in terms of the vast numbers of people heading into the city at different times.
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"In terms of events it doesn't come much bigger than Radio One's Big Weekend and the football parade and a major ship coming in, all in the same weekend," explains culture director Claire McColgan. "We have never had a weekend that is this intensive ever in terms of the three things we are really good at as a city - which is music, sport and maritime."
Sefton Park prepares to host Radio 1's Big Weekend festival this weekend
Sefton Park prepares to host Radio 1's Big Weekend festival this weekend
(Image: Liverpool ECHO/Staff)
"So it is a great way to showcase all of those brilliant things but it is absolutely huge. If we could have paced it out more we would have done but obviously we couldn't predict when Liverpool would win."
The Premier League parade was always the unknown in this scenario. While the agreement with the BBC for the Big Weekend goes back to last summer and the Cunard celebrations have been on the books for a while - no one can predict what will happen in football.
"When we agreed Radio One's Big Weekend was coming here we did know there was a chance we could have a football parade on the Monday," explains head of events Sue Gibson.
"We do sit there in August and work out the football dates, so it flags in all the event calendars. So we knew the Monday could be parade day, which was a blessing because it is a bank holiday. We have to look at all the different combinations for the dates."
"I am not a football fan but post-January I can hold a decent conversation about football because I am watching it that closely. We have been in a situation before where we have planned parades that didn't go ahead, which is a strange situation."
Sue adds that it was "helpful" that this year Liverpool won the league with so much of the season left. In this sense the team were grateful to Arne Slot's men for getting the job done and allowing them to cement the plans they had been working on for months.
"All the planners have been talking to each other for a long time," adds Sue. "As Liverpool started to get a bigger and bigger lead it became a reality that it would all be happening across the same weekend.
"With Cunard as well it has been really important for us to work with everyone and make sure that operationally, one event doesn't hinder another. We have been working really hard with all the key stakeholders over that."
The council says it expects at least 500,000 people to come out for the parade although they admit this is a conservative estimate. They are strongly encouraging fans to enjoy the spectacle at different stages of the 15km route around the city rather than all flooding into the city centre.
Claire McColgan, Director of Culture Liverpool
Claire McColgan, Director of Culture Liverpool(Image: Andrew Teebay)
"If you live close to the route and are able to walk to see the bus, you will get a better view, you will absolutely get closer to the players outside the city centre," says Sue. She explains that there will be pyrotechnic moments of fireworks and confetti across the entire route stemming from a dedicated 'pyro truck' that will run in front of the players' bus.
The route itself is one that has been used before in both 2022 and 2019. Culture bosses explained that this route gives the most space for the most people to enjoy it - with the buses travelling across dual carriageways the whole time. There will also be no point where the parade stops and becomes a stationary event - as has been seen with other club trophy celebrations this season.
There is a simple reason for this, says Sue: "Other clubs just don't get the numbers that we know are going to come." Add to this the lack of a city centre park-type space and it was decided between the council and the club that this was the best plan.
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With that in mind, what kind of backup planning needs to happen? What is the bus breaks down? "I have got three buses and I would be really unlucky to lose three. This is the minutiae of the level of planning we have to go into. I have got so many different plans I could bore you with."
"We have been planning this for a very long time," she adds. "The scale of what we are doing is just that big."