The Villa Park crowd watch support acts, during British rock band Black Sabbath’s “Back to The Beginning” concert, Ozzy Osbourne’s final ever gig as Black Sabbath’s frontman at Villa Park in Birmingham, central England on July 5, 2025. Osbourne, who revealed in 2020 that he has Parkinson’s disease, will join Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward for the all-day “Back To The Beginning” show in Birmingham, central England, where the heavy metal giants formed in 1968. (Photo by ANDY BUCHANAN / AFP) (Photo by ANDY BUCHANAN/AFP via Getty Images)
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Back to the Beginning, the final farewell concert for Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath that took place in Birmingham, England this summer, might be returning as an annual music festival in the near future. According to The Mirror, there’s been an application made to trademark the historic metal concert ‘Back to the Beginning.’ Monowise Ltd, the company which owns Ozzy Osbourne’s trademark, has filed legal documents seeking legal protection for merchandise related to the metal festival. A similar legal application is supposedly being submitted in the UK as well, possibly indicating that ‘Back to the Beginning’ could be returning to both the U.S. and UK markets.
Is ‘Back To The Beginning’ The New ‘Ozzfest’?
Back to the Beginning had many parallels to Ozzy Osbourne’s late ‘90s and early 2000s metal festival, Ozzfest. Both live events featured a huge number of iconic names like Metallica, Pantera, TOOL, Alice In Chains, and most importantly Ozzy Osbourne. While Ozzfest was a touring festival that had a portion of its lineup dedicated to up and coming acts at the time, Back to the Beginning and Ozzfest were nearly identical in that the lineups were curated by the Osbournes.
If Back to the Beginning were to return as another Ozzy Osbourne branded festival, one which celebrates the life and legacy of not only him but Black Sabbath, it could be a interesting and honorable way to memorialize the late Prince of Darkness. However, one stark difference between Ozzfest and Back to the Beginning is that the latter was a charity event – all proceeds from Back to the Beginning were donated to Acorns Children’s Hospice, Birmingham Children’s Hospital and Cure Parkinson’s.
It’s hard to imagine if Back to the Beginning returns as annual event that it’ll continue donating all of its proceeds to charity. Each year there more festivals being canceled and having to close shop entirely due to recent economic challenges, and in 2025 alone there more than 100 festivals around the globe that had been canceled. Maybe there’s some kind of middle ground that Back to the Beginning can reach, where the proceeds from merchandise are donated to charities and ticket sales are used to book the artists and produce the festival, or vice versa.
There’s certainly not just one solution to this, and maybe Back to the Beginning entirely does away with its charity donations, despite the optics not being favorable in that scenario. However, if Back to the Beginning is in fact returning as a annual music festival, it’ll certainly need to accommodate more modern bands and not just feature legacy acts as it did in 2025. So many of the older bands that performed at Back to the Beginning are nearing the final stage of their careers, or they’re already in them. Additionally, with the sheer of number of rock and metal festivals these days, Back to the Beginning is going to need do something more interesting in the rock festival market to separate itself from other like minded festivals.