Sziget Festival in Budapest, Hungary Should Be On Your Festival Bucket List

For two-and-a-half decades, the good people at Sziget Festival have been opening their doors to international performances, an extensive amount of festival attendees, care for the quality and uniqueness of the festivals production, and providing everyone with an experience of a lifetime.

People from over 100 countries around the world crossed the bridge onto The Island of Freedom and found a campsite anywhere in the festival. My friends and I made the good choice of buying a moving-In pass to set up camp only 100 meters from the main stage, and have prime location days before the festival even started. 

With these 'Moving In 3-Day Passes,' you can turn your week long festival into 10 days. This is not for the weak. Plan accordingly for all of the elements with the perfect rave wear for you.

Personally I have never seen this many stages and activities at a festival. As for the main stage, after a stunning performance by P!NK night one, Wiz Khalifa closed out the second night with his nostalgic hip hip tracks that had the whole crowd singing.

Wiz Khalifa photo credit: Nicolas Avellaneda

The Chainsmokers, Major Lazer, and Dimitri Vegas and Like Mike all closed out their own nights with their live electronic sets. Macklemore and Ryan Lewis was definitely a favorite for a lot of the Europeans at the festival. Last but not least, English rock band Kasabian took the stage Friday night. 

The mainstage also hosted acts like Rudimental, PJ Harvey, Iggy Azalea, Glass Animals, Alt-J, and Galantis.

With so many other stages around and over 1,000 artists on the docket, you have your entire week-long schedule laid out with international talent like Andy C, GTA, Valentino Khan, Oh Wonder, DJ Shadow and Flume on the OTB Bank Stage by A38. 

Or you could cross the festival grounds to the Telekom Electronic Beats Arena for acts like W&W, NERVO, Thomas Jack, Oliver Heldens, Digital Farm Animals, Steve Aoki, Bakermat, Don Diablo, Cosmic Gate, and Bassjackers.

The festival sold out two of the seven nights and had a total of over 452,000 people in attendance to party and rave throughout the seven days. Sziget welcomed its 8 millionth visitor this year to a girl from Transylvania. She was given a “forever pass” to Sziget at the ticket booth by founder Károly Gerendai.   

As for the future of Sziget, Tamás Kádár, CEO of Sziget Cultural Management said, “The 25^th 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.”

Sziget has already announced their 2018 dates: August 8th - 15th (8 nights). You can expect to see more info about tickets and a line up in the future. 

A huge thank you to the Sziget Team for the great time! This is one festival that NEEDS to be added to your future vacation plans. Stay up to date with more Music Festival News HERE on iEDM.