Two of New Zealand's most popular New Year music festivals have sold out, with record numbers ahead of tonight's New Year's Eve parties.
The Rhythm and Alps festival has reached capacity this year with 10,000 people attending. Photo: Supplied
The South Island's Rhythm and Alps festival in Wanaka's Cardrona Valley reached capacity with 10,000 people, and Gisborne's Rhythm and Vines is hosting 20,000.
A muddy start to the Rhythm and Vines festival on Friday didn't stop some 20,000 revellers from dancing the night away.
The founder, Hamish Pinkham, said they sold out in September, topping the numbers from last year, with many of the festival goers from overseas.
"I think the Rhythm and Vines experience is definitely travelling throughout the world, people are coming from all over to join us, I think we had about 10 percent of our sales from overseas. So Germans, Australians, Americans, a lot of Asian travellers as well are joining us for a real Kiwi experience and first to see the sun in 2018."
The Rhythm and Vines venue earlier today. Photo: RNZ / Leilani Momoisea
Alex Turnbull, the director of the Rhythm and Alps festival near Wanaka, also said 10 percent of its festival attendees were from overseas.
He said the festival reached capacity at 10,000 people for the very first time.
"There's about 10 percent, so about 1000 from offshore and one of the other stats that's quite interesting for us is it's about 30 percent over the age of 30."
Both directors said there hadn't been any major incidents, and the weather was looking calm and perfect ahead of the big night tonight.