“Excuse me! Do you know where basic camping is?” a sportily dressed, likely Anglo-Saxon man in his 20s shouts to dozens of footsloggers rushing from the entrance to the Óbuda Island to lay their hands on a cold beverage. He is standing between two formidable stretches of tents, neither of which appear to qualify as “basic” (i.e., for free) despite looking like it. Finally, three (very) young women stroll in laughingly. “Do you know where basic camping is?”pleads the man. “Why, are you basic?” chortles one of the ladies. Pause. “Well, I am today,” retorts the lad with a faint smile.
They strike up a conversation. I am nearly positive none of the women had a clue where the so-called basic camping was, but we’ve emerged from the anecdote with a potentially exciting friendship stirring up. Talk about an excellent return on investment.
It is 7 August, and the 30th anniversary of Sziget, one of the global music event behemoths, is underway. With a capacity of up to 95,000 people daily, over six days, Budapest’s Óbuda Island, Sziget’s home, transforms into a Wonderland on steroids: dozens of stages, chillout or party spots across 266 acres offering hundreds of activities around the clock. Drag queen shows, street carnivals, board game spots – even a sand beach on the Danube – all contribute to the unique nature of this gathering, its magic, one could say. This year, A-listers such as Kylie Minogue and Halsey, coupled with big beat grinders like Martin Garrix and Skrillex and producer prodigies Fred Again and Four Tet, all roll around in confetti and dust with visitors from more than 100 countries.
PopMatters has written extensively on Sziget over the years for those interested in uncovering its many delights. There are honestly too many to list in one article but in short, if you are looking for a genuinely special feeling of merging intense partying with summer fun chillout and some of the most glorious sightseeing Europe has to offer, Sziget is your one and only.
Brief Impressions on the Island’s Economic Reasoning
Surely, this is by design. Sziget’s organizing team, totaling around 100 people, works tirelessly to position their brainchild as the biggest partying experience, not just in continental Europe but worldwide. I’ve already mentioned in the first review that gone are the days when Sziget was Central/Eastern Europe’s window into the world of music (this very much included “world” music, not just Anglo-Saxon radio hits). We are no longer in 2004.
Since Hungary liberalized itself by entering the European Union in 2004, music and cultural events have become plentiful, and residents of the region are a lot more mobile. Conversely, COVID-19, inflation, and economic crises have hit the entire continent hard, and the music industry has undergone a considerable transformation as a result. Money no longer flows in abundance; fewer “non-pop” acts get funding from major labels, fewer performers in general tour, and fewer people within the shrinking middle class spend big bucks on “culture”.
The said plentiful events started to compete hard for whatever money people had to spend on leisure. Many, such as Volt, one of Hungary’s biggest music bashes and a sister festival to Sziget since 2002, didn’t survive. Some that seemed here to stay, like Berlin’s splendid Tempelhof Sounds, simply failed to disclose they weren’t coming back (word on the street is that not enough big names are touring to support a three-day rock/pop outing).
Sziget, however, always had a get-out of insolvency-free card in its ability to position itself as an “ultimate” party location. An entire island for festivities with full infrastructure for its Szitizens (pet name for the attendees) – campsites free and paid all over, pop-up grocery stores, pharmacies, toilets with proper seats and bathrooms with functioning showers, and even a booth for free psychological counseling – all this ensures unprecedented immersion. Attending Sziget makes one feel like a part of a community, a partaker in a shared experience of pure joy, safely away from the tiresome worries of the everyday. The “Island of Freedom” tagline practically wrote itself. In a sea of happenings, there’s never been anything quite like this, and Sziget’s marketing team leans in to ensure their baby surpasses growing pains and thrives well into adulthood.
What does this leave Sziget 2024 festivalgoers with? Unfortunately, not the World Music Stage or the Opera stage, former iconic staples of the festival, nor with dozens of illustrious indie names storming through the Revolut (formerly A38 and Freedome) stage, the second largest concert venue of the festival and traditionally a hub for the hottest alternative names on the planet. All this has been scrapped in the past five years while the number of turntable-oriented acts and the capacities of the Colosseum and the Party Arena grow.
Guitar-driven Main Stage headliners also became scarcer, and most of the artists who get booked tend to cost less than, say, Gorillaz in 2018 or Foo Fighters in 2019. Some exceptions, like Arctic Monkeys in 2022 or Florence + the Machine and Mumford and Sons in 2023, remain, but fewer pop-rock acts are on tour this year, so one thing led to another. Clubbing giants Martin Garrix, Skrillex, and Fred Again stepped up, leading the lineup with pop icons Kylie Minogue, Halsey, and Sam Smith (reports say Minogue was paid $900k while Halsey cleared a cool $1.5 million). Liam Gallagher stands out as the sole rock headliner, and this is only because he costs a mere $150k. Well, that plus the thousands of intoxicated Brits ready to sing “Definitely Maybe” in its entirety.
Tamás Kádár, Sziget’s chief executive, confirms that the general programming has been “modified to better suit the mean age of the visitors”, which he says has decreased in the past decade. This is likely true, but no statistics confirm this, and the festival’s management has been known to be clamlike about disclosing any “touchy” data. As a Szitizen with 20 years at the event under my belt (I started very young), I have good reason to suspect Kádár’s assertion is the cause, not a consequence, for the change in Sziget’s artists’ demographic.
Not ten years ago, in my mid-20s, I was still among the younger people attending Sziget. Especially taking into account that those over 25 were more likely able to cover the $1k plus costs of ticket, travel, and accommodation, one would be remiss not to ask why the management thinks it’s a good idea to cater Sziget in 2024 for students or even teens. Quite likely, this is because only the “magic” of the “biggest party on Earth” is guaranteed to bring in enough revenue to keep the beast going, and it’s precisely those under 25 who’d be most likely to prioritize a good rager over music.
Is that enough to keep Sziget going? There is debate about whether Sziget’s attendance has declined in recent years. The event, which counted 350,000 plus tickets since the beginning of the 21st century, first got to over 400,000 visitors in 2014, with 415,000 tickets sold for seven days of music, fun, and debauchery. While the number of days changed several times, from seven to five to six, the attendance numbers kept skyrocketing, and the seven-day edition of 2018 reached an astonishing 565,000. The lineup, in which Sziget always took much pride, remained deliciously eclectic and star-studded throughout the naughts and much of the 2010s; the rise in the number of tickets sold mostly had to do with the organizers gradually expanding the island’s daily capacity from about 70,000 to 95,000. After the peak in 2018, 2019 saw a slight drop to 530,000 people, then COVID-19 hit. When Sziget returned in 2022, it was cut down to six days, but 450,000 heads roughly corresponded to the numbers it scored with seven-day editions.
I have to say that the data is difficult to analyze as so much is kept secret or vague. To this day, varied sources cite varied capacities, although they’re never more than 5-10 percent apart in assessment, which is still more than enough to mess up the calculations. Moreover, one local portal claims that the daily capacity of 95,000 includes 10,000-15,000 staff and performers, with only about 80,000 being ticket holders. Never have I been able to verify the exact figures.
That said, across these years and relative to capacity, about 80 percent of Sziget would sell out easily. According to the data I could dig up, even on the least lucrative years, a minimum of around 75 percent of tickets would sell out. In 2023, with 420,000 visitors over six days, less than three-quarters of the capacity was sold out. This year, the chiefs didn’t even bother to announce the exact numbers, laconically remarking that “nearly 400,000” Szitizens enjoyed the extravaganza. Assuming this is 399,000 and not 370,000 folks, it’s still barely 70 percent of availability. Conflate that with financial losses of 1.8 billion Hungarian forints (ca. $5 million) in 2023 vs. 355 HUF (ca. $1 million) of profit in 2022, and it won’t take a Tesla to see that something ought to change.
My bet is on the lineup and the prices of food and beverages. While some $350 for a six-day pass and free camping spots is manageable even for Hungarian standards (and “affordable” for many others, which is why more than half of the audience comes from abroad, specifically the UK, Germany, and The Netherlands), $15 for a small burger with stale fries or $7 for a slice of pizza isn’t. The locals have long lamented the staggering markups, but the old liberal maxim of maximizing profitability per unit won (so far). It stings to see the food prices, which traditionally used to be steady and fair, literally double in under five years. Though many evidently still don’t mind, it is just as clear I’m not the only one who feels this way.
As for Sziget’s lineup? Hard as I’ve thought about it over the years, I’ve realized it’s unbecoming to comment on whether it’s gotten “worse”. Outside of the socioeconomic context of Sziget’s marketeering, there’s nothing “wrong” with the acts there. Fred Again is superb, Sam Smith sublime, Halsey endearingly berserk, and Kylie Minogue magnetic. I’d happily recommend shows to anyone, just as I have with Dua Lipa two years ago or Billie Eilish last year. It’s just that their aesthetic is different from what a large part of 30+ audiences want to hear, and I’m afraid Sziget, despite its calculations, needs these folks to succeed, too. As I have said, those who come primarily to party won’t mind some genre diversification either way.
Brief Impressions on Sziget 2024’s Music and More
Unfortunately, my impressions of music aren’t as plentiful as usual this year, as I could only stay for the first three days. Still, what I did catch was mostly fitting for an open-air leviathan like Sziget. After a wonderfully pop-filled, if somewhat quiet Day 1, Day 2, headlined by the indomitable Halsey, sees a considerable uptick in enthusiasm, especially on behalf of female teenagers rightfully outraged with societal constraints they are only starting to uncover. Day 3 is again quite slow, quite unexpectedly for a Friday, but hordes of inebriated millennials salvaged Liam Gallagher’s aloof venture of rehashing Oasis’ iconic “Definitely Maybe” 30 years onward, and Stormzy, the most lauded rapper this side of the Atlantic, picks up the atmosphere with a wholesomely engaged show.
Despite a noticeable lack of crowds (the biggest crowd of the year belongs to the “Pangbourne House Mafia”, i.e. Fred Again, Skrillex, and Four Tet, all three of whom perform on Day six, though sadly separately), all the people I come across seem to be having as much fun as expected. The relaxed atmosphere, something few mention but integral to the Sziget experience, amplifies the feeling of contentment manifold. The morning tai chi classes and chillout lounges, in particular, are lovely spaces of calm and rest between dancing mayhem. A vacation necessitates some quiet, too, after all.
Here are the three best acts from days two and three:
Halsey
“There’s a pop Halsey, and there’s a rock Halsey,” remarks the star deadpan midway through her 90-minute set. On 8 August in Budapest, after she took a seven-month break from touring to sort out health issues, we get both, but with a slight – and very welcome – skew toward riff-heavy sound. Tens of thousands of girls and young women with an unapologetic attitude to match Halsey’s storm the Island hours before the show and enjoy a flashy, Journey meets Luis Fonsi (forgive me, but it’s true) concert by Azahriah, Hungary’s 22-year-old Youtube wonder and the only local to have ever sold out three consecutive nights at the Puskás Aréna football stadium.
In baggy, low-cut jeans, with a bratty leopard-print string top and gelled up, deep red, spiky close chop haircut, Halsey looks the part of a teen liberator who takes shit from no one. However, unlike many of her aesthetic peers or forebears, Halsey embodies her concerns and anger with electric vivacity and a voice to match. A batch of songs from her latest and melodically most complex effort, If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power, produced by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, mesh well with her softer and snappier tunes, such as “Without Me” and “Gasoline“.
Throughout the performance, the 29-year-old speaks about her life and ambivalence toward genres, announcing a likely comeback to pop. She does a live debut of “Lucky“, a new single serving as an homage to Britney Spears’ smash hit from 2000, as well as a world premiere of a new song, “Lonely is the Muse“, of which we only got a short snippet.
As a Trent Reznor devout and a 30-something party-starter in a (this time genuinely) noticeably younger crowd, I considered the magnificent outro to the meditative “The Lighthouse” a high point. Surely the rest would disagree, as it was the chorus to “Closer“, Halsey’s duet with the Chainsmokers, that bring about the first truly seismic reaction from some 50,000 fans. The singalong screams are so loud the Island trembles and the dust rises to the skies; there’s no better indicator of a successful show at Sziget than that.
Stormzy and Yves Tumor
“It doesn’t matter if you don’t know who I am or if you’re into this type of music or not, we’re all here for the same reason,” proclaims Michael Owuo Jr., aka Stormzy, before a mildly interested but good-spirited mob. It’s still broad daylight, a subpar environment for a co-headliner, but Stormzy’s no newbie. In 2018 he already won the masses over in the exact same setup, his set then cleverly culminating in his remix of Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You“. This man knows what to do to lure you in and hold your attention and that’s that.
This time around, with a full band and back vocals, the author of “Vossi Bop”, “Big for Your Boots” and “Shut Up” effortlessly makes good on his promise to “give us everything he’s got”. The crowd responds in kind, with critical mass growing tune after tune. Besides the usual bangers, Stormzy’s pulsating, frenzied new track with Chase & Status, “Backbone”, brings the tipsy house down.
The other best act of Day 3 also played on the Main Stage; however, it’s too early to attract the crowd they deserve. Yves Tumor, one of the rare truly genre-bending acts of our time, again combines their sublime talent and their jazz, funk, and psychedelic influences to invite us into another whirlwind of “neo-psychedelia” or whatever those arrangements are called nowadays. Sadly, in the blistering sun, only about 10,000 people stuck around, while the rest pop in and out, but it is a fantastic 60-minute show, like a gentle hug from the Sun itself (I’m getting carried away, but it really is lovely). We need more artists like this in Sziget’s upcoming years, even if only on smaller stages.
So, was Sziget 2024 worth the time and effort? I say yes, and so much is confirmed by my acquaintances, especially the ones who brought the celebration to a boiling point on Monday, 12 August, with Fred Again and Skrillex (and Four Tet later on at the Revolut stage). The criticisms we give about Sziget’s setup and lineup without overlooking the austerity measures implemented in the past five years are all given with respect.
Three decades on, Sziget continues to be this rarefied, one-of-a-kind Wonderland for grownups, a simply brilliant vacation spot, whether you camp on-premises or commute from Budapest’s opulent center. Whether it Sziget will keep fixating on one type of audience remains to be seen, but if you like what you’ve heard, seen, or read so far – the super early bird tickets for 2025 are already on sale.