Most Desirable Festivals In The World

onurjones (45)in #festival • 4 years ago (edited)

Hello fellow Steemians, I hope everyone is doing well and safe!

I love attending festivals, enjoying the beautiful, unique vibes over and over, raving is a culture of revealing your own self and letting things go for a period of time. Its refreshing effect cannot be underestimated. It is a different universe you enter to, you can meet many different people, get a glowy colour design on your face, find interesting costumes, participate in many weird activities that can be very amusing. With these being said, I would like to share some of the most desirable festivals in the world, including my own opinions and a bit of my own taste to some extent! It will be a mixture of what is being so highly attractive and what attracts me the most!

10 - Mad Cool (Madrid, Spain)

This is going to be the newest festival amongst the ones on this list! Mad Cool Festival is a 3-day festival(they seemingly will increase the number of days to 4) that happens in July. It first took place in 2016, and the lineup of the first edition was incredible and over the expectations(The Prodigy, Die Antwoord, Kings Of Inconvenience, The Two Door Cinema Club, Flume, Digitalism etc.) for a newbie festival! It was assertively organized and a huge shout-out is deserved by the creators and curators of the festival! And since then, Mad Cool has hosted really big names, like, The Cure, Foo Fighters, Green Day, Foals, Arctic Monkeys, Tame Impala, Depeche Mode, Bon Iver and maaaaany more!

A great advantage that the festival offers is the location, it is moderately distanced from the city centre. Being more inclined to the rock and indie genres, the festival has a wide range of genres and there is almost something for everyone's taste. This is one of the elements that puts Mad Cool ahead of many!

9 - Exit (Novi Sad, Serbia)

Exit is one of the greatest festivals in the world when the price/quality rate is taken into consideration! Like Mad Cool, it is a summer festival and it has a few sub festivals with different names, dates and locations, but to be focused on the actual festival, it is on July, and in Serbia. Exit was first founded in 2000 by university students who intended to fight for the democracy in Serbia due to political developments. It has won many major awards to this date, most significant ones being, Best Major Festival at the European Festivals Awards in 2013 and 2017.

Exit is mostly based on electronic music and the selection of the artists are pinpoint accurate. From Maceo Plex to Boris Brejcha, Carl Cox to Faithless, Paul Kalkbrenner, David Guetta, Snoop Dogg and many others! The festival has a great reputation among Europe and it continues to grow.

8 - Boom (Castelo Branco, Portugal)

Boom is a festival based on Psytrance and psychedelic music. It was founded in 1997 and is a biennial festival. It is a whole different experience, psychedelic music is not a populist genre and it will mostly gather people who have the understanding of spirituality and enjoy their mind within. Boom is one of the largest and most famous psychedelic trance festivals around the world. Boom offers a variety of activities and events, such as, workshops, art galleries, meditation, yoga etc. Psychedelic festivals are much more likely to be richer in design, with sharp colours and nice figures everywhere.

7 - Ozora (Ozora, Hungary)

Okay, here we are, the most comprehensive, profound, influential psychedelic gathering festival out there. The spiritual journey has started back in 1999. Ozora, has literally anything a person can expect from a festival. It takes place in August and is a week-long festival in the city of Ozora. Many people all around the world prefer Ozora, there are plenty of reasons to sort down. Incredible stages with numerous colour concepts, its location that has all that nature offer, great lineup, immense atmosphere, and a huge gathering which goes over 100.000 people.

6 - Awakenings (Amsterdam, Netherlands)

Simply the best techno festival in the world. Awakenings gathers the best current techno DJs globally every year. It is a techno heaven in arguably the most suitable country in Europe to host it.. Festival location is near Amsterdam. It connects techno lovers from everywhere and provides a great spirit of a modern rave. Just to mention a few of those biggest name in the industry, Carl Cox, Boris Brejcha, Adam Beyer with the likes of Maceo Plex, Charlotte de Witte, Monika Kruse, Stephan Bodzin and all the other names that grace the name techno with brilliant success. Festival is (in my opinion) the pioneer of techno-based electronic music festivals, likes of Movement, Sonar will need to gear up in order to compete with this joyful experience.

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5 - Ultra (Miami, FL, USA)

Was founded in 1999, its name was inspired by the album of Depeche Mode with the same name. Ultra attracts a wide range of passionate young generation; essentially concentrated on electronic music, with many subgenres of it, little portions of hip hop and pop added.

Ultra was a one-day festival until 2006.

The festival happens in an extremely central area in Miami. It opens its doors to 150000-200000 attendees a year. Ultra's one distinctive feature is undoubtedly the lineups. The biggest names will always brighten up the stages!

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4 - Tomorrowland (Boom, Belgium)

Tomorrowland is the world's biggest dance music festival. It takes place every July in Belgium. It was first performed in 2005. It has quickly become a very famous festival and gathered the attention of people from all over the globe. It got to a degree, that they decided that the festival should take place two weekends in a row. Easy to say that a big investment for the festival organization is being made every year, considering the great stages, great sound/light systems, fire shows(!) and setups, amazing facilities. It is a different world that could be considered a wonderland for festivals.

P.S: Line up will never disappoint you! Best of every genre will be present every year!

Tomorrowland has its own currency, and it is called pearls. It has won countless awards. Honestly speaking, I think festivals like Tomorrowland are special, it has a great contribution to world peace and it cannot be underestimated. Imagine people from every country in the world, including North Korea, will take their place there and festival vibes will lead them to connect and share moments! Positive vibes not only make people smile, but also relieve all their stress, anger, and other negativities. People will reveal their love within. There is a lot to mention about this flawless organization, but I am going to keep it summed up. Lastly, Tomorrowland has been carried out to other locations around the world, including Brazil, Georgia(U.S) etc. One that took place in Georgia was under the name TomorrowWorld, lasted 3 years from 2013-2015. It actually had tremendous success in the first year, and the second year followed the first, but in the third year, the really bad weather conditions caused a lot of problems, which obviously was at the level that even the organizers were not ready to face. So it became a disaster, and then it was announced that the festival wouldn't take place in 2016.

3 - Coachella (California, USA)

Coachella is a must-experience festival at least once in a lifetime! It is a very large setting and an organization in Indio, California that takes place every year in April. The festival applies to a very large spectrum of participants and this is one reason why the tickets get sold out rapidly. It amazes by possessing popular culture, subculture, indie culture, hippy culture in one place.

Coachella is arguably the only festival that you can be dancing next to a high volume celebrity, or you can just run into walking in the crowd. It is a festival that even celebrities can not give a damn about being asked questions or approached and just go enjoy.

Coachella was first put in action in 1999. The earlier story to the idea of the festival occurs in 1993, during a concert of Pearl Jam at the same exact location of the festival. After a few years, Paul Tollett, who was later going to be the creator of the festival, started making researches and investigations on how to turn his dream come true. So he went to the Glastonbury festival to both analyse and give away flyers about the possible new festival and its location. Afterwards, they faced a few errors towards making the festival, however, better later than never, they accomplished and announced it for the date of October 1999. Headliners were Beck and Rage Against The Machine.

The area that the festival is being held, itself provides a sense of great peace and a prosperous feeling. Walking around the valley can never feel ordinary in there. You will reach the state of euphoria by all the spontaneous acts, various shows full of diversity, and by what your ears and eyes will continuously witness, because, artists of visual shows, are going to be as attractive and impressive as the musicians.

2 - Glastonbury (Somerset, UK)

Considering the number 1 of this list will be a community event other than a festival, Glastonbury is simply the most respected, and the greatest festival in the world. It is essential when the subject is festivals since 1970. Glastonbury is diverse. It has a circus, theatre, dance and comedy shows throughout the festival. Every year they are competing only with themselves in terms of headliners! Its renowned Pyramid Stage has seen the biggest names in the history of music.

Glastonbury Festival impressed many hippies back in the 1970s. The festival has evolved in a way that people would manifest their thoughts, raise their voices all along. It is a very independent and strongly supported festival, and highly demonstrative, no doubts it attracts many activists every year!

Festival has a district called Shangri-La within. It is a district in a universe in a whole different dimension.

I sincerely hope that the legacy of the Glastonbury Festival will go forever.

1 - Burning Man (Nevada, USA)

Yes, I can hear many of you are questioning this event being mentioned here since it is an event, not a festival factually. However, as the years pass by, it is being considered and acknowledged as a festival, we can surely add the ticket fees to that.

Burning Man is a festival held in Black Rock Desert/City in northwest Nevada annually since 1986. First few years, it was free admission. By time, its fame and charm grew, Burning Man identifies a theme for each year's edition. Themes are supported by the participants and reinforced by the advertisements etc.

It is the longest amongst the ones on this list, by being a nine-day gathering. Unlike other festivals, music is not as much on the front burner. Art installations are a big and crucial attraction of the festival. Of course, there are WILD parties awaiting you.

Don't bat an eye on me calling it a festival. It is not a festival. It is a temporary city getting built each year! It is a different universe partially relying on the performances and creativities of the participants too! In other words, you are encouraged by the community to reveal your inner qualifications.

Burning Man stands on 10 principles of its own; radical inclusion, gifting, decommodification, radical self-reliance, radical self-expression, communal effort, civic responsibility, leaving no trace, participation, immediacy. We are not going to largen these principles now.

Burning Man is a source of help for individuals who seek inner peace. Amplifying the conception that we may all have different attributes, different perspectives, but we are one.

Among all, Burning Man is the most distinctive event in terms of concept, organization, vibes, activities. In Burning Man, people embrace each other, make solidarity, build things together, make art, dance etc.

One inventive feature of the event is definitely the -no money- usage within the festival.

When it comes to its name, "Burning Man" takes it from the symbolic ritual of burning a wooden sculpture of a man.
Below is a link where you can read the more detailed story of Burning Man ritual from Erik Denning

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-idea-of-burning-a-wooden-man-at-the-Burning-Man

This photo of the first-ever Burning Man sculpture and the gathering of a countable people in 1986 impresses me.

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Although the wealthy attendees have affected the spirit of the community a little, we can not blame the founders. To give an example, Billionaires Row, which is a highly luxury complex arranged by/for wealthy Burners, does not comply and match with the idea of the event.

Transportation around the desert is best handled by bicycles, many people prefer using bikes, and when you see those people on bikes with super creative outfits, and decorations on their bikes, you will unintentionally smile.

Let's grace our youth!