It doesn’t matter where you are now — absolutely all people love to have fun and travel. That is why event tourism has received a new impetus in recent years, annually gathering millions of people from all over the world to festivals. We have compiled a list of the best events from around the world and we will tell you what they are famous for and where they take place.
1. Coachella, USA
The festival of Music and Arts “Coachella Fest” is held annually in the Californian city of Indio, located 200 kilometers east of Los Angeles. The first official session of Coachella was held in 1999, but the festival owes its appearance to the American group Pearl Jam, which in 1993 staged a major rock concert in the Coachella Valley. Although “Coachella” is also considered an art festival, which is confirmed by the dimensional art objects, the main thing here is still music. In terms of intensity and scale, it can be compared to the Chicago Lollapalooza music festival or the Belgian Tomorrowland. Coachella has united various directions of independent music — from indie rock and deep house to hip-hop.
2. La Tomatina, Spain
La Tomatina, or Tomato Fight, was launched back in 1945 and is one of the oldest festivals on our list. Legend told it all started when during a carnival in the small town of Bunyola, naughty boys threw their breakfasts at each other. A year later, the idea was intercepted by adults, staging a slaughterhouse with fresh vegetables in the central square. You can get into tomato madness and swim in ripe pulp in the last week of August, arriving at 10 a.m. on the central square of the city of Plaza del Pueblo. The vegetable chaos lasts exactly an hour, but the festival itself lasts a week and is accompanied by grandiose fireworks, dance performances, musicians’ performances and a fair.
3. Oktoberfest, Germany
Oktoberfest is a Munich beer festival that runs from the penultimate weekend in September to early October. Millions of people come here from all over the world to taste German beer, aromatic sausages, enjoy folk music and local Bavarian flavor. At the first day of the festival, everyone gathers at the Schottenhamel beer tent — this is where the official opening ceremony takes place, where the city’s mayor is honored to uncork the first barrel of Oktoberfest beer. After that, drunkenness is officially declared!
4. The carnival in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
The carnival in Rio de Janeiro is perhaps the largest festival in the world and is considered to be the greatest show on earth. Despite the ongoing madness, the celebration of the carnival in Rio has religious roots: it is believed that it served as a kind of respite from the oppression of the Catholic Church and an ascetic lifestyle. The holiday is celebrated in many Latin American countries, but no one does it as posh as in Rio. A costumed procession of dancers accompanied the Brazilian Carnival, deafening music and original competitions. The culmination of the festival is a bustling extravaganza on Sambadrome Street, where tens of thousands of spectators gather to watch 12 of the best samba schools compete for the grand prize.
5. Burning Man, USA
The organizers themselves define the event as an experiment in creating radical self-expression for the community, which in this is completely entrusted only to itself. For a week in the desert, works of modern art are installed. Some of them are burned before the end of Burning Man. The territory of the festival is free of money and sales, so the participants take care of food, accommodation and other needs themselves. At the end of the festival, participants remove all traces of their stay, and its location in the desert changes year after year.