The juiciest weekend of the summer rapidly approaches. That's right, the 2019 Beijing Burger Festival is on Jun 22-23 at Galaxy Soho!

We'll have all the activities, entertainment, music, and of course, food and drink vendors you've come to expect from our blowout weekend-long parties. Last year's event attracted 15,000 hungry fans of all things burger and this year – marking the seventh edition of the festival – we hope to outdo ourselves once again with our best offering to the meat and bun gods yet. This year's festival will be bigger and better than ever, with 15,000 burger fiends scouring 50 booths for the best burgers, booze, and bites as well as two full days of music, entertainment, competitions, as well as the launch of our first ever Best Buns Contest, where contestants will battle it out with nothing else but their brawn and chiseled buns.

We’ll have competitions for both men and women on each day of the fest, and fitness professionals on hand to work you out as the masses check your moves out on stage.How to register? You can email your interest in advance by sending us an email atmarketingteam@thebeijinger.com or just turn up at the Burger Fest (either day) and “try out” after 1pm with our pro B Active 24Hr Fitness trainers Ankit, Wendy, and Diva and we’ll get you on stage for the competition at 4pm.

It will also be our most vegan and vegetarian-friendly festival yet so that you can come a gorge on burgers no matter your dietary persuasion. On top of those veggie options, there'll be at least 10 new burger vendors that have never attended before.

 To keep your interest piqued prior to the big event we thought it only right to shed a little light on this year's theme (as well as our first ever Air Guitar Competition – more on that below).

In keeping with burgers and their deep-rooted American tradition – and if not American then what are they? – we've themed this year's event after the world-famous US Route 66 highway. Running close to 4,000km between Chicago, Illinois and Los Angeles County, California, Route 66 was opened in 1926 as a means to link huge swaths of the western United States and ease domestic migration.

The "Main Street of America" has remained a cultural icon ever since, taking center stage in everything from masterpieces of literature (Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath) to giving rise to whole counter-cultures (the Route 66 Biker Rally) as well as communities around the fast food establishments and diners (Delgadillo's Snow Cap Drive-In) that begun to line the road in the 1950s and remain open to this day.

On Saturday and Sunday at 5pm, eight contestants will be invited on stage to show off their imaginary shredding skills. Summoning the energy of the world's guitar gods, they'll then take turns jumping, fretting, and headbanging it out to a one-minute clip of a song of their choosing in order to prove themselves the ultimate air guitar hero. Whoever comes out victorious – as determined by the crowd's roars and a very scientific decibel meter – stands to win a whole host of prizes and coupons that total over RMB 2,000 in value.

Finally, we're almost out of RMB 20 advance tickets for the event (which come with a niftyBeijinger branded bandana), but don't worry, you'll still be able to buy tickets at the door for RMB 25.