The 15th Campus Festival ended on Sunday morning, the dismantling and cleaning of the program locations began in the afternoon. Nearly five hundred people are working to restore the area, the road sections closed due to the festival will be opened to traffic on Monday morning.
This year’s Campus brought more record numbers than ever before. The jubilee event ended with a sold-out day and a total of 118,000 visitors over the course of four days, making it the largest festival aimed at Hungarian audiences in our country. Despite the all-day storm warnings and minor thunderstorms, Friday was the most visited day in the festival’s history, with more than 35,000 festival-goers. The greatest interest was in the concerts of Robin Schulz, Azahriah, Tankcsapda and Dzsúdló, and on Saturday Majka performed in front of a sold-out audience on the main stage, where she greeted the audience in Debrecen: “The best festival in the country is Campus…”
Several people had the same opinion about this during the festival. “Debrecen is my hometown, it’s always special to come back here. This city always gives me a lot”, and the audience could already hear this from Klári Balázs, who has been at every Campus Festival with György Korda since the beginning.
Music continued to play a leading role on Campus.
“In addition to the concerts of the prominent headliners, an important feature of the Campus is that almost the entire spectrum of the domestic music scene will take place on one of the many stages,” said program director András Süli. “More than 1,500 musicians and DJs representing the most diverse genres performed on the fifteen music stages. This year, we were able to welcome ten foreign productions to our stages, including the likes of ZAZ, Parov Stelar and ATB. It was a special pleasure to be able to meet such legends of Hungarian musical life as Tibor Tátrai, János Karácsony, János Bródy, Gyula Bill Deák and Feró Nagy at the festival.” Within the music program, of course, rap and hip-hop performers, as well as electronic music genres that are dear to the younger generations, were also prominently present.
The Campus has been a safe, family-friendly, cultured festival for several years, which truly touches all age groups. In addition to the entertainment, the University Square, dreamed up by the University of Debrecen, has been playing an important role at the festival for years, which is one of the most visited daytime program locations at the festival every year. Just like the Civil Village, where forty-one organizations representing important social issues presented themselves this year, as well as the Campus Kid & Art Zone connected to it, which really captivated all age groups with its colorful whirlwind of programs.
About 2,700 employees worked on this year’s Campus, of which two hundred and sixty were at the counters and almost three hundred were responsible for the safety of the audience, there was a 0-24 hour medical and ambulance service, and the Nagyerdei Stadium was available in any weather and ensured safe entertainment.
Despite the stormy weather, Friday was the most successful day in the history of the festival so far. The organizers had to solve the biggest difficulty on this day, after the rain in the afternoon, the entry of thousands of people who suddenly arrived at the festival at the same time caused a problem. Twenty operating cash registers tried to reduce the thus increased waiting time.
“With the exception of the rain on Friday, this year’s Campus took place without any problems,” said László Páll, one of the managers of Debrecen Campus Nonprofit Közhasznú Kft., which organized the festival. “Fortunately, the operative group did not have any extreme tasks. The restoration has already begun, order will be restored in the Great Forest within days.”
In addition to musical diversity and the creation of all-encompassing services that serve the needs of festival-goers, the organizers also consider social responsibility to be important year after year. As a result, even more money was collected for charity this year.
“At the opening reception of the Campus, more than HUF 11.6 million in support was collected thanks to the VIP guests, and one of the partners of the festival, Tranzit-Ker Zrt., supported our initiative with an additional HUF one million,” said Péter Miklósvölgyi, another managing director of the Debrecen Campus Nonprofit Kft.
“We offered the amount raised in this way to the István Regőczi Foundation, which helps children orphaned by the coronavirus, and the Debrecen Charity Board.”
Cleaning and demolition have begun so that the surroundings of the Nagyerdei Stadium can be returned to their original condition in a short period of time. In the following days, the restoration of the area and the removal of the superstructures will be carried out with great effort. Hundreds of lighting elements, space installations, and many imposing structures will disappear soon, but the comfortable venue, the memory of the concerts and the atmosphere of Debrecen have left behind a unique festival experience from the Jubilee Campus Festival. And we already know when we will meet again next year: Campus July 17-21, 2024. between.
(Debrecen Campus Nonprofit Kft.)
