Veszprém Street Music Festival

It may seem unbelievable now, but until the end of the last millennium, Veszprém was the epitome of ‘Plan B’ from May to September. Due to its enviable location, locals and tourists alike only used the town's services when the weather turned bad and they couldn’t spend the day at the beaches. Veszprém was considered little more than a quiet sleepy town near Lake Balaton. Then, in 1999, a few young people shook up their beloved city by dreaming up an event in keeping with the town’s spirit. They wanted to prove to the citizens and leaders that Veszprém was destined for much more. And the rest is history...

What started 23 years ago as a competition to find the best street musicians in the country has grown to become one of Hungary's most popular free music events, thanks to the city's hospitality and refusal to compromise when it comes to music quality. The structure of the programme itself has changed a lot over the years. The initial main event, the street musicians' competition, was moved from the evening to the afternoon, thereby shifting the emphasis. The quality of the international jury, the € 5,000 prize money and the festival's reputation for musicians in the acoustic genre, make it a great privilege to play and especially to win the Veszprém Street Music Festival.

The proof of the legitimacy of the festival and its role on the domestic scene is in the number of artists who started their careers on the streets of Veszprém and now fill clubs and sports halls all over the country.

Thanks to continuous change and development, the event is now divided into different times of the day. The festival, which starts when the street music competition ends, features only international performers, in 12 venues, 24 concerts per evening and 20 concerts in daytime. It is now a very different event. With a daily attendance of 20,000 visitors, the festival is a unique musical event even in the streets and squares of Veszprém. The town’s people are justifiably proud, for the unique atmosphere has become a cultural trademark of Veszprém and the Central Transdanubia region. The organisers host musicians from all over the world in a downsized, people-friendly, rather than classical festival setting. Although they may be renowned and successful professionals in their home countries, these performers are basically unknown in Hungary.  

The concept is that foreign artists should not come to the city for a single concert only but should stay for four days and become an integral part of the city's daily life. For the roughly 200 artists who wake up, have breakfast, sing, dance, and laugh with the city’s inhabitants, making friends and fans, their stay will be a lifetime experience for them. And on the very first day, he will forget that he came to Veszprém to work... This secret makes the Veszprém Street Music Festival inimitable and, to an outsider, almost inexplicably cathartic.