Sziget Festival: at the beginning of a new 25 years

Sziget Festival, the Island of Freedom, has ended with the total number of 452.000 Szitizens attending the 7-day non-stop music & arts festival. The 25th Sziget had two sold-out days with an amazing crowd arriving from more than 100 countries.

Tamás Kádár, CEO of Sziget Cultural Management and the person taking over the role of founder Károly Gerendai, will lead the following 25 years, promising to have vital changes happening already next year.

He also added: “The 25th festival is a turning point in Sziget’s life: an era has ended, where we built a unique and popular multicultural festival, differentiating it from other festivals with its amazing atmosphere, cultural diversity, colorful program, high level of services and spectacular visuals. Today Sziget is seen as a great leader among other festivals and because of this we also have to change, so we don’t become just one in a million.”

Founder Károly Gerendai with the Sziget birthday cake, photo: MTI

The 25th Sziget Festival hosted less Szitizens than last year’s record-breaking numbers, but still had 2 sold-out days and more than 450.000 visitors. Kádár thinks that the turn-out number could be a combination of many factors as the growing number of Sziget-like festivals and as he said “an unlucky line-up this year”. Regardless of these, he said that a wonderful and peaceful festival happened during the 7 days.

In 2017 Szitizens arrived from more than 100 countries, most of them came from The Netherlands, United Kingdom, France, Germany and Italy, but Szitizens arrived from further parts of the world as Australia or Hong Kong to Budapest. This year several Hollywood stars were spotted at Sziget as well. On the P!NK day Ashton Kutcher, Mila Kunis, Justin Theroux and Luke Evans visited the island, who also came back the following days. Ashton Kutcher and Mila visited the gig of Wiz Khalifa and The Chainsmokers, where they did not only check out the concerts, but also hang out with the artists backstage. Many performers crossed the ocean only because of their Sziget concert, like Iggy Azalea, The Chainsmokers or Macklemore, who unfortunately got hospitalized after the show.

The security system of Sziget was also a success this year: the check-in system introduced last year is considered a great way to tackle security issues and many festival organizers visiting Sziget had a big interest in this new system. The Head of Security had also positive news, the statistics were 30-40% better than last year.

Sziget Festival will be held in 2018 between 8-15 August.

Fun facts

Sziget welcomed its 8 millionth visitor: the girl arriving from Transylvania was shocked when Károly Gerendai, founder, gave her a “forever pass” for Sziget at the ticket booth. Photo: MTI

– One of the sensations this year was an Art Of Freedom project, where a mobile toilet led to a secret party.

Photo: MTI

Photo: MTI

Source: Sziget Festival