Visitors from all six inhabited continents and a total of 112 countries have attended this year’s Sziget Festival, ranging from Iceland to New Zealand and Canada to Japan, the festival’s press chief Viktória Vető said on Friday.
Sziget has been one of Hungary’s most significant cultural and tourism attractions for decades, bringing tens of thousands of visitors to Budapest from around the world each year, according to a statement. Google data showed that nearly 500,000 people outside Hungary had searched for the festival over the past month.
Foreign visitors account for around 50 per cent of Sziget’s audience, making it one of the most international and widely attended events in the country, the organizers said.
The festival’s audience stretches from Europe across Asia and Africa to North and South America, Australia and the Pacific islands. Most international visitors come from Europe, with the number arriving from neighbouring countries also increasing steadily.
The Netherlands is the festival’s largest foreign source market, while significant numbers of visitors also come from the United Kingdom, Austria, Germany and Slovakia.
New Zealand holds the record for the greatest distance travelled. Budapest and Wellington are around 18,000 kilometres apart as the crow flies, yet several hundred people from New Zealand are making the journey to attend Sziget.
African countries represented at the festival include Algeria, Angola, Côte d’Ivoire, Morocco, Tunisia and Zimbabwe. From South America, visitors have arrived from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay.
Asian countries represented include Japan, South Korea, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines.
More than 40 countries have also sent journalists to cover this year’s festival from Budapest.
International media representation is particularly strong from Italy, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Poland, while media outlets from neighbouring Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Austria, Slovakia, Romania and the Czech Republic are also present. Journalists have additionally arrived from India, China, Australia, Mexico and Brazil, as well as Israel, Algeria, Senegal, Colombia and Peru.
Among the hundreds of accredited media organizations are major international outlets including AFP, Reuters, the Associated Press, China’s Xinhua, Britain’s NME, Kerrang!, Q Magazine, Dazed and The Independent, as well as France’s ARTE, France Inter, RFI and Libération, Italy’s La Stampa, Austria’s ORF and Germany’s Deutsche Welle.
Influencers are also strongly represented. Organizers invited 56 high-reach content creators to the festival, while numerous additional influencers have been accredited from various countries.
Sziget’s international presence is further supported by 150 ‘Sziget ambassadors’, who promote the festival around the world through their own communities and social media platforms.
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