Football, Music, Style: Como’s Summer on the Lake

Football on the Lake turned a postcard into a playground. Across five sunlit days from 23 to 27 July, Como welcomed teams from Italy, Scotland, the Netherlands and Saudi Arabia and supporters from around the globe to turn a preseason into a summer holiday. The club built the festival around the first Como Cup and set everything to the rhythm of the lake. A knockout mini tournament gave the calendar its heartbeat. A fan village draped across Piazza Cavour drew families and day trippers from morning to evening. Then there was a stadium concert under the open sky that felt like a local secret gone global. The balance was pitch and piazza, football and festa, with the Alps quietly keeping watch over it all.

The fan village was the daily anchor. Piazza Cavour became a friendly maze of small sided cages and game stations with table football and ping pong sitting happily next to face painting and colouring corners. Tournaments on FC25 rolled through the afternoons as the breeze lifted off the water. The message was simple and warm. Come as you are. Play something. Watch something. Stay for another round of limbo. The village ran free of charge from ten in the morning to six in the evening and it even staged the public reveal of the new Como shirt while the Como Cup trophy took a proud turn on display for photos. Local radio favourite Carlo Carletto Nicoletti kept the tempo as the unofficial ringmaster. It felt like a promenade designed by football people for everyone.

The village also doubled as a showroom for the club and its partners. Adidas energy ran through the week from the new home strip to the already celebrated sneaker project that nods to lake colours and artisan detail. Como and adidas had announced their multi year partnership for 2024/25 and beyond so the festival was a natural moment to let the collaboration live in public. The limited edition sneaker series that began last autumn was upgraded with a hand painted lake motif and collector aura. Fans queued for photos and products while children lined up for the next three versus three. It is football merch reframed as lifestyle and travel memento.

On the pitch the format delivered crisp drama under the lights. Evenings at Stadio Sinigaglia took on a festival glow as the lake shifted from gold to deep blue and the stands began to hum. The first, second and fourth and fifth evenings belonged to the Como Cup. Como opened the tournament against Al Ahli and the hosts set the tone with a 3 to 1 win. The other semifinal paired Ajax and Celtic in a meeting that drew lively travelling support from both clubs. Four nights later the final gave Sinigaglia a summer curtain call and Como lifted the first Como Cup on home grass with the water shimmering just beyond the stands. You could see it on the faces in the tribune. A preseason fixture can still feel special when it belongs to a place.

Matchday evenings became little holidays. The club leaned into tourism with packages that folded in VIP seating and time on the water by boat earlier in the day. It is the sort of detail that makes a friendly feel like an experience. You arrived for football and stayed to watch the sky fade behind the mountains, leaving with a phone full of quiet blue frames. That is how the festival worked in miniature. It stitched the game into the lake and the city and asked visitors to take a piece of both home.

The third night was reserved for music. Live on the Lake was the festival’s single night concert and it filled Sinigaglia with the glad noise of summer. Becky Hill headlined with the kind of big voiced set that turns a stand into a chorus. Italian hitmaker Sick Luke and the ever up for it Patrick Nazemi ran the decks and the mood. You could feel that shared grin when a crowd realises a stadium is another kind of stage and a corner flag can be a front row. Local outlets had teed it up as a signature moment and it landed that way.

Hill’s set moved through the singalong points fans wanted and the cameras caught the joy. The guest energy spilled beyond the mic too with visiting supporters and friends of the artists sliding from boat rides to the ground and back out into Como nightlife after the final song. Stadium concerts can be hard to love when they feel bolted on. This one felt written for the place and for the week.

The star power was real and visible. American football great Robert Griffin III (RGIII) took in the games and the lake with the enthusiasm of a lifelong fan. Supermodel Jourdan Dunn brought effortless style from the terraces to the boats, her posts catching the gold light of the lake at its most flattering. Rap royalty arrived in the form of Giggs, congratulating creative director Rhuigi Villaseñor and the club on the tournament’s success. ASAP Nast added his own splash of cool, sharing the vibes from pitchside and beyond. From the world of television, Ted Lasso’s Kola Bokinni was as animated in the stands as he is on screen, leaning into the matches and the festival mood. It was a guest list that doubled as a cross-section of sport, music, fashion and culture, and it made the whole thing feel even more like an event you had to be at.

There were thoughtful touches all week. Free entry to the village kept the barrier low. Clear fixtures gave structure to travel plans. The club posted regular updates. It felt organised without feeling rigid. The footprint was light on the city but visible and lively. Piazza Cavour felt animated rather than crowded.

The art of Football on the Lake was in how it connected the everyday and the exceptional. The everyday was a table football tournament and a face paint butterfly and a stroll to gelato between matches. The exceptional was a trophy raised with mountains as witness and a pop star sending a chorus into a night sky. The club’s voice around all of it was calm and confident and the visuals were clean and handsome. You could tell this was a project made to travel well on camera and yet it still felt grounded in Como’s setting and rhythm.

Looking ahead there are a few signs to watch. The club calls the Como Cup a new tradition which is a gentle way of saying the festival should return. Media around the event treated it as a first edition with a view to growth. The dedicated Como Cup section and mailing list suggest the organisers want to keep a year round line of communication and the tourism packages feel like prototypes that can be tuned each summer. Expect partner footprints to evolve as adidas and Como continue to build their language together in apparel and in experience design. If you are planning a trip next year keep an eye on the Como site and the events hub where ticket packs and add ons appeared first this time.

The festival’s quiet achievement was to remind everyone that context matters. The same game played somewhere else is only a game. In Como it becomes a day across the water and a walk through a piazza and a song under a mountain and a photograph you will actually print. A preseason with purpose. A summer week that understood its setting and invited guests to belong to it for a little while. That is why people will come back. That is why the second edition already feels inevitable.