This year's festival was shortened from a week to five days, plus a "zero" day featuring hard rock grandfathers Iron Maiden. Before the zero day, the island venue hosted a programme featuring Hungary's best-known artists paying tribute to Hungarian song. In spite of the shorter programme, the festival still attracted a record number of visitors, though this was partly due to the good weather and the excellent line-up, said Gerendai.
"We may continue this direction next year but I do not want to make an early promise because the experiences from this year's event must be assessed first," Gerendai said. The Day of Hungarian Song will be held independently next year, he added.
Work will soon start on putting together the line-up for next year's festival. Acts that organisers have wanted to bring to the festival for some time include Metallica, the Red Hot Chilli Peppers and Depeche Mode.
"We will obviously try again next year to get them to come over," Gerendai said.
Because it didn't rain and because of the shorter programme, the festival's island venue was left in far better shape this year than in earlier years, Geredai said. Still, some HUF 30 million will go toward laying new grass and other rehabilitation work.
Organisers received fewer complaints from local residents - no more than eight a day, compared to an average daily 20 a year earlier - who were also happy about restrictions on parking that gave them back their streets from festival-goers.
Source: Hungarian News Agency (MTI) / Photo: Máté Nándorfi
