Every August, West London turns into one of the world’s biggest street parties. Notting Hill Carnival is more than just a weekend of floats and sound systems, it’s the largest celebration of Caribbean culture in Europe and the second biggest carnival in the world.

For 2025, we worked with Spotify to bring the Carnival Sounds campaign to life, building on a six-year partnership that started back in 2020 when the event went digital during lockdown. What began as a micro site has grown into a permanent hub inside the Spotify app, spotlighting Caribbean music, artists, and now, stories that stretch beyond the dance.

This year’s focus was on Gen Z, a generation discovering Carnival in real time. The campaign unfolded as a three-part social series exploring the sounds that define the culture: Reggae, Dancehall and Soca . Artists, tastemakers and younger voices were at the centre, giving each genre context and energy through lived experience.

Alongside the social content, we produced a hero YouTube film, a new Carnival Sounds playlist artwork that stretched across Spotify’s in-app hub, and high-impact OOH visuals with billboard placements and also flyposters running along the NHC procession route. To ground everything in authenticity, the work also tapped into existing footage captured at Trinidad Carnival and City Splash Festival.

What makes Carnival Sounds stand out is that it doesn’t stop at music. This year, the hub also offered audiobooks and podcasts, created in partnership with organisations like The Black Curriculum, giving young listeners space to learn about Carnival’s history while immersing themselves in its present.

For us at 3QUENCY, it’s about more than delivering assets. It’s about showing how culture moves, how sound, image and story can connect global platforms with grassroots traditions, and how the next generation finds its place in the rhythm of Carnival.