Sziget Festival Draws around 450,000 Revelers – PHOTOS

An estimated 450,000 party-goers attended this year’s Sziget Festival, with the event drawing a sell-out crowd on its opening day and near-capacity crowds on two other days, the festival’s main organizer said on Monday.

Speaking to MTI on the closing day of the festival, Tamás Kádár said that daily average attendance this year had been higher than in 2019 when the event was seven days long and drew a total of 530,000 people.

The festival was canceled in 2020 and 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Concerning this year’s headliners, Kádár praised British pop star Dua Lipa‘s opening-night concert.

Dua Lipa’s show was perfectly planned down to the last tenth of a second,”

he said. However, he said the other headliner, Canadian pop singer Justin Bieber, had

received some unfavorable reactions,” while others had found his show to be “the experience of a lifetime.”

Kádár said that Sziget’s owners had aimed for the festival to make a successful comeback after the hiatus. “I think this goal was met,” he said.

He welcomed the changes introduced such as the new entry process and the expansion of the area around the main stage.

But Kádár said the labor shortage in the music industry, inflation, and the weaker forint had all made the planning of the event more challenging.

At the same time, Sziget benefitted from many western European festivalgoers buying six-day passes this year instead of three-day ones, as a result of the growing demand for music festivals in Europe following the pandemic restrictions, he said.

The festival marks its 30th anniversary next year, Kádár noted, adding that organizers are planning further upgrades.

Featured image via Zoltán Balogh/MTI