Sziget 2026

[kristofm]

By the way, what he also said and probably wasn't mentioned above, that it's going to take a while to hear to announce the first names. Super early bird tickets will come sooner than any of the new names, so they can measure the interest in the festival itself, the strenght of the brand itself, etc. He's confident that we'll NOT hear names anytime soon because of that. They've done some of the booking, but he wants to get "a sexy group of names" that they can announce in the first phase. 

 

It seems like they are still not sure about the length of the festival, he said something like there are strong arguments for 5 days as well, tickets for 3 days are selling better, young people don't party for 6 days like "we" did back in the day, etc.

[Matt86]

4 minutes ago, kristofm said:

By the way, what he also said and probably wasn't mentioned above, that it's going to take a while to hear to announce the first names. Super early bird tickets will come sooner than any of the new names, so they can measure the interest in the festival itself, the strenght of the brand itself, etc. He's confident that we'll NOT hear names anytime soon because of that. They've done some of the booking, but he wants to get "a sexy group of names" that they can announce in the first phase. 

 

It seems like they are still not sure about the length of the festival, he said something like there are strong arguments for 5 days as well, tickets for 3 days are selling better, young people don't party for 6 days like "we" did back in the day, etc.

 

Millenials >>> Gen Z

 

😃✌️

[thetime]

1 hour ago, kristofm said:

By the way, what he also said and probably wasn't mentioned above, that it's going to take a while to hear to announce the first names. Super early bird tickets will come sooner than any of the new names, so they can measure the interest in the festival itself, the strenght of the brand itself, etc. He's confident that we'll NOT hear names anytime soon because of that. They've done some of the booking, but he wants to get "a sexy group of names" that they can announce in the first phase. 

 

It seems like they are still not sure about the length of the festival, he said something like there are strong arguments for 5 days as well, tickets for 3 days are selling better, young people don't party for 6 days like "we" did back in the day, etc.

 

Don't seem very organised

[bunnyv]

Well people won’t be very pleased if the reason for withholding the ticket sale and the date announcement is not a big name..

[billybigballs]

12 hours ago, kristofm said:

By the way, what he also said and probably wasn't mentioned above, that it's going to take a while to hear to announce the first names. Super early bird tickets will come sooner than any of the new names, so they can measure the interest in the festival itself, the strenght of the brand itself, etc. He's confident that we'll NOT hear names anytime soon because of that. They've done some of the booking, but he wants to get "a sexy group of names" that they can announce in the first phase. 

 

It seems like they are still not sure about the length of the festival, he said something like there are strong arguments for 5 days as well, tickets for 3 days are selling better, young people don't party for 6 days like "we" did back in the day, etc.

How can you possibly sell super early bird tickets to a festival of indeterminate length, taking place on unannounced dates??? 🤣

 

 

[CCester]

11 minutes ago, billybigballs said:

How can you possibly sell super early bird tickets to a festival of indeterminate length, taking place on unannounced dates??? 🤣

 

 

We went from ‘you’ll get the first headliner sooner than you’d expect’ through ‘we wait with dates and early bird until you get your salary in september so it will boost early bird sales’’ to ‘’we still don’t know the dates, the length of the festival, you won’t get names in the foreseeable future, but guess what? Buy tickets so we can measure the band itself which was obviously in decline in recent years’’ in a span of weeks. At this pace we still won’t have a clear understanding about the dates when other festivals in August start to announce lineups.

[So Sad Simon]

18 hours ago, kristofm said:

By the way, what he also said and probably wasn't mentioned above, that it's going to take a while to hear to announce the first names. Super early bird tickets will come sooner than any of the new names, so they can measure the interest in the festival itself, the strenght of the brand itself, etc. He's confident that we'll NOT hear names anytime soon because of that. They've done some of the booking, but he wants to get "a sexy group of names" that they can announce in the first phase. 

 

It seems like they are still not sure about the length of the festival, he said something like there are strong arguments for 5 days as well, tickets for 3 days are selling better, young people don't party for 6 days like "we" did back in the day, etc.

If they reduce the festival down to three days I suspect they'd find their visitor numbers would drop like a stone. The length of the festival its its unique selling point. The fact that it runs for six days and people can drop in for three of them is tempting, while the rest of us do the long haul.

 

Sounds like they're weighing up between going for a strong 5 days,  or 6 days where a couple of days are weaker - same as usual!

 

Their firat announcement last year seemed particularly poor, outside of the headliners, and it felt like they were struggling to recover after that.

 

They did recover, but I suspect they'd lost a lot of punters to other festivals in the meantime.

 

 

 

 

[SweetJesus]

4 days with better lineup is optimal and best choice.

[thetime]

24 minutes ago, SweetJesus said:

4 days with better lineup is optimal and best choice.

 

Prefer 7 and a thinned out lineup.😂

[CCester]

1 hour ago, SweetJesus said:

4 days with better lineup is optimal and best choice.

Reducing to 4 days would be the end of it in my opinion. I’d be happy to take the 5+1/2days like before.

[Yelo, the Parmiggiana]

29 minutes ago, CCester said:

Reducing to 4 days would be the end of it in my opinion. I’d be happy to take the 5+1/2days like before.

Yeah, I feel like they might just reverse to the old "7 days festival with music program for 5 days" and push back the support from NGO and other forms of arts.

 

Rebrand it from "just another festival" that Sziget has lately become in order to cater to a wider crowd.

And I'm not saying Sziget is "just another festival", because I know it like the back of my hand, but it screams that to a newcomer, due to the the lack of aftermovie, critical acclaim and a lineup that falls really flat in terms of variety: nowadays zoomers don't dig too much into things, and if I judged Sziget by Budapest (and by extension Hungary) or the lineup it would be a hard pass.

 

Keep the art budget intact, put a minor sum of it into the artistic workshop department for the first 2 days, and keep the festival structure intact for the remaining; invest in less roboant names and try to make it more "critical acclaimed" then "sexy" - Primavera always does a great job at that, and if Coachella made it too this year, it might be a trend worth to explore (so more so, since Glasto is on hiatus).

 

The formula was working and it still might, even with the increasing costs of management, Sziget just bottlenecked itself by trying to standardize the formula for scalability without pressing as hard as it should have on it's strengths: Sziget's strengths has never been about been standardized, and that's something that whoever followed Dan Panaitescu failed to grasp. 

[Matt86]

The most prolific editions in terms of entries are 2018 and 2019. Over 7 days.

 

In addition to that, I remember a lot of details that made the difference in past years, like the fireworks every night in 2019 for example, the color party and light-sticks party, themed stages (like the yellow dome which only played pop-rock from 11 p.m.), more food stalls, bars open from the morning (while again this year, at 1 p.m.!, I had to go to 5 bars before finding one that served me...)

 

7 days of festivities makes Sziget unique. If it goes to 5 days (or 4...), why would "non-Hungarians" go there, when every country already has several festivals of this format ? ...

[activean]

16 minutes ago, Matt86 said:

The most prolific editions in terms of entries are 2018 and 2019. Over 7 days.

 

In addition to that, I remember a lot of details that made the difference in past years, like the fireworks every night in 2019 for example, the color party and light-sticks party, themed stages (like the yellow dome which only played pop-rock from 11 p.m.), more food stalls, bars open from the morning (while again this year, at 1 p.m.!, I had to go to 5 bars before finding one that served me...)

 

7 days of festivities makes Sziget unique. If it goes to 5 days (or 4...), why would "non-Hungarians" go there, when every country already has several festivals of this format ? ...

I definitely agree, all of the things you listed were unique things that were actually great marketing and created a stronger brand, "a special experience", exactly what they want now, that it doesn't all depend on the lineup. 

[SweetJesus]

27 minutes ago, Matt86 said:

7 days of festivities makes Sziget unique. If it goes to 5 days (or 4...), why would "non-Hungarians" go there, when every country already has several festivals of this format ? ...

Same reason why non-Croatian people coming to INmusic, it will be cheaper than any other festival in August

[Yelo, the Parmiggiana]

32 minutes ago, Matt86 said:

The most prolific editions in terms of entries are 2018 and 2019. Over 7 days.

 

In addition to that, I remember a lot of details that made the difference in past years, like the fireworks every night in 2019 for example, the color party and light-sticks party, themed stages (like the yellow dome which only played pop-rock from 11 p.m.), more food stalls, bars open from the morning (while again this year, at 1 p.m.!, I had to go to 5 bars before finding one that served me...)

 

7 days of festivities makes Sziget unique. If it goes to 5 days (or 4...), why would "non-Hungarians" go there, when every country already has several festivals of this format ? ...

2018-2019 were bubble years tho. I mean, it's not a bubble per se, but COVID and post-COVID changed the rules of the game. It would be fair to consider taht if the pandemic never happened, Sziget's business model would have continued to be a winning one, but the rules have changed by quite far.

 

In the new scenario it's just simply impossible to win the festival race by sheer force of your cartel, because Sziget cannot compete with the ongoing prices (+ the hungarian florin that is quite shite), so it has to find different ways. Either you rebrand yourself as something that a slice of your audience can still recognize itself with and at the same attract new audience, or you re-scale yourself like Exit did (good luck doing that while paying for Obuda reservation each year...), or you die, honestly.

 

You can't expect Sziget to try and keep up with Glasto / Mad Cool / Werchter playing by the same rules: it just does not have the money for it and it managed to destroy its brand over the last few years.

[thetime]

2 hours ago, Yelo, the Parmiggiana said:

Yeah, I feel like they might just reverse to the old "7 days festival with music program for 5 days" and push back the support from NGO and other forms of arts.

 

Rebrand it from "just another festival" that Sziget has lately become in order to cater to a wider crowd.

And I'm not saying Sziget is "just another festival", because I know it like the back of my hand, but it screams that to a newcomer, due to the the lack of aftermovie, critical acclaim and a lineup that falls really flat in terms of variety: nowadays zoomers don't dig too much into things, and if I judged Sziget by Budapest (and by extension Hungary) or the lineup it would be a hard pass.

 

Keep the art budget intact, put a minor sum of it into the artistic workshop department for the first 2 days, and keep the festival structure intact for the remaining; invest in less roboant names and try to make it more "critical acclaimed" then "sexy" - Primavera always does a great job at that, and if Coachella made it too this year, it might be a trend worth to explore (so more so, since Glasto is on hiatus).

 

The formula was working and it still might, even with the increasing costs of management, Sziget just bottlenecked itself by trying to standardize the formula for scalability without pressing as hard as it should have on it's strengths: Sziget's strengths has never been about been standardized, and that's something that whoever followed Dan Panaitescu failed to grasp. 

 

They could and maybe should follow the Roskilde festival model, which sells out every year. For me only festival comparable to Sziget in Europe is Roskilde. 

 

4 days of the festival, plus first 3 days to Scandinavian artists on the smaller stages. 

 

Sziget could easily do that, with artists playing The Buzz and the colleseum.

 

 

 

Edited September 29, 2025 by thetime

[northernangel]

4 hours ago, SweetJesus said:

4 days with better lineup is optimal and best choice.

I agree myself. You need a better lineup but I feel 7 days of how it is for me at least starts being a holiday away to find a few acts to watch whereas a festival should already a solid range to watch with a side of other stuff.

[h12101]

2 hours ago, Matt86 said:

the color party and light-sticks party,

Ironically, they took an absolute pasting when they started doing this (on here and elsewhere), as it meant one less band a day on the main stage.

[clasher]

1 hour ago, SweetJesus said:

Same reason why non-Croatian people coming to INmusic, it will be cheaper than any other festival in August

 

The only time I went to Sziget was 2023. A 3 day ticket was over 200€. The food was priced at Glasto levels, just way worse and way less diverse. The drinks were reasonably priced, but that's changing too. The "cheaper" factor really isn't there anymore. 

[billybigballs]

17 minutes ago, clasher said:

 

The only time I went to Sziget was 2023. A 3 day ticket was over 200€. The food was priced at Glasto levels, just way worse and way less diverse. The drinks were reasonably priced, but that's changing too. The "cheaper" factor really isn't there anymore. 

 

The 'cheaper' element comes when you can buy a six day ticket for something in the region of 280 euros. 

 

Although, you're right about the cost of food, which is crazy high at some stalls.

 

 

[Matt86]

46 minutes ago, h12101 said:

Ironically, they took an absolute pasting when they started doing this (on here and elsewhere), as it meant one less band a day on the main stage.

 

glowsticks party was during Martin Garrix show, so it didnt cancel any show.. there have always been 4 concerts on the mainstage

[clasher]

19 minutes ago, billybigballs said:

 

The 'cheaper' element comes when you can buy a six day ticket for something in the region of 280 euros. 

 

Although, you're right about the cost of food, which is crazy high at some stalls.

 

 

 

Weren't full festival passes in the region of 400€ (with fees) last year? Excluding ultra super early bird stuff. But even then you get what's essentially a strong 3-day festival lineup diluted to 6 days.

 

I get your point about "cheaper", I just don't think it's the case anymore. Or at least less and less so with every year.

[h12101]

7 minutes ago, Matt86 said:

 

glowsticks party was during Martin Garrix show, so it didnt cancel any show.. there have always been 4 concerts on the mainstage

Before 2013, there were 5 per day. They lowered it to 4 in 2013, and replaced a band a day with flags, balloons and coloured paint instead. I think around that time they lost a big tax-break from the Government, with a big drop in the size and depth of the lineup, and a big move away from the NGO and charity stuff.

[billybigballs]

42 minutes ago, clasher said:

 

Weren't full festival passes in the region of 400€ (with fees) last year? Excluding ultra super early bird stuff. But even then you get what's essentially a strong 3-day festival lineup diluted to 6 days.

 

I get your point about "cheaper", I just don't think it's the case anymore. Or at least less and less so with every year.

 

Pretty sure I paid (just) under 300 euros for mine for this year. However, it was a super ultra whizzy mega early bird ticket.

[Yelo, the Parmiggiana]

2 hours ago, billybigballs said:

 

The 'cheaper' element comes when you can buy a six day ticket for something in the region of 280 euros. 

 

Although, you're right about the cost of food, which is crazy high at some stalls.

 

 

Something in the range of 30 euros for a shakshuka at one stall called "Mykonos" if I do recall myself - the place was always full with the whitest people I could fathom