The story
Sziget Festival in Budapest
Founded in 1993 as Diaksziget by Karoly Gerendai and Peter Muller, Sziget Festival on Budapest's Obudai-sziget island grew from an initial crowd of 43,000 to a record 565,000 in 2018, hosting headliners from Kendrick Lamar to Billie Eilish across stages including the pallet-built Yettel Colosseum, combining international musical lineups with theater, circus and visual arts programming.
Sziget Festival began in 1993 as Diaksziget, or Student Island, founded by manager Karoly Gerendai and musician Peter Muller, known as Sziami, in response to the funding collapse that followed the end of Hungary's Communist-era summer festival scene, and its first edition, organized largely by volunteer music fans and priced at roughly 300 forints a day, ran so far over budget that it took until 1997 to repay the losses; even so, the first year drew about 43,000 mostly Hungarian visitors to some 200 concerts, 40 theatre productions and 80 films screened in an open-air cinema.