About Sziget

The Sziget Festival (pronounced [ˈsiɡɛt] is one of the largest music and cultural festivals in Europe. The festival is held annually in August in Budapest, Hungary and takes place on Óbudai-sziget ("Old-Buda Island"), a leafy island of 108 hectares (266 acres) on the Danube, thus Sziget stands for Island. Currently it holds more than 1000 performances each year. The week-long festival has grown from a relatively low-profile 1993 student event to become one of the definitive European rock festivals by the late 1990s, with about half of all visitors coming from outside Hungary, including the UK and France (11 000 French visitors in 2007.It also has a dedicated "party train" service (with resident DJ's) that transports festivalgoers from Western Europe. The second event (1994), labeled Eurowoodstock, was headlined by performers from the original festival 25 years after. In 1997, Sziget attendancy rates surpassed the 250 000 mark, and in 2001, the 350 000 mark. The all-time peak year was 2009 with 390 000 visitors.It is now being increasingly labeled as a European alternative to the Burning Man festival due to its unique features ("an electronically amplified, warped amusement park that has nothing to do with reality"). In 2011, Sziget was ranked one of the 5 best festivals in Europe by The Independent, and one of the 10 best by the European Festival Awards.

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