Sziget Festival Welcomes Visitors from 112 Countries

Visitors have arrived at this year’s Sziget Festival from all six inhabited continents, representing a total of 112 countries, ranging from Iceland to New Zealand and from Canada to Japan, press officer Viktória Vető said.

Sziget has been Hungary’s most significant cultural and tourist attraction for decades, bringing tens of thousands of visitors to Budapest from all over the world every year, she said in a statement. According to Google data, in the past month alone, nearly 500,000 people searched for the festival from outside Hungary’s borders, she added.

"Sziget stands out not only for festival-goers' geographical diversity but also for the high proportion of international visitors – around 50% – making it one of the most international and most-visited events," the statement said.

Most visitors come from Europe, and among them, the number of festival-goers from neighboring countries has been growing steadily.

Among foreign visitors, the Netherlands is the largest market, but significant numbers of festival-goers also come from the United Kingdom, Austria, Germany and Slovakia. New Zealand holds the record for the longest distance travelled: despite Budapest and Wellington being some 18,000 kilometers apart, hundreds of people undertake such a long journey to be there at Sziget.

From Africa, countries including Algeria, Angola, Cote d’Ivoire, Morocco, Tunisia and Zimbabwe are represented, from South America, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay are on the list, and from Asia, countries including Japan, South Korea, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines are represented. Journalists from more than forty countries have traveled to this year’s festival to report from the venue, with international media presence particularly strong from Italy, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Poland. Journalists have also arrived from India, China, Australia, Mexico and Brazil, and the list includes countries such as Israel, Algeria, Senegal, Colombia and Peru.