OZORA Festival

It all began on 11 August 1999, the day of a total solar eclipse visible from Hungary. For the occasion, the Solipse Festival set up from 9 to 15 August at Dádpuszta, a farming estate in the municipality of Igar near the village of Ozora, with three stages and international acts. It was run by a collective that celebrates every total eclipse, and the experience had no sequel for five years.

In 2004 the estate's owner, Dániel Zimányi, revived the party as Sonar Plexus, focused on goa trance; in 2005 it took the name O.Z.O.R.A., after the nearby village. The festival has returned every summer except 2020 and 2021, cancelled because of Covid-19, and its few hundred pioneers have become tens of thousands. Parts of the site have been built to last over the years: the Dome in 2011, the Dragon Nest stage in 2012, the Mirador tower in 2014, a lake in 2017.

Music is only part of the programme. Across some 145 hectares, the festival lines up workshops, yoga, meditation, dance classes, healing spaces, circus, talks, galleries and installations, with tea houses and a craft bazaar. There is only one ticket, for the whole event, camping included: people come for the week, which the organiser sums up by saying that nobody goes in and out, they build a small city. The team also runs a radio station, radiOzora, and has taken the party abroad as one-day editions in Paris, Tokyo, Mexico City and São Paulo.

Official capacity is 30,000 people, which is also the estimate used by the Hungarian press for 2025 and 2026, as the organisers have not published a figure; the crowd comes from more than 100 countries. In 2025, TNT Magazine ranked OZORA among the ten best music festivals of the year, the only one from Central Europe. The 2026 edition, from 24 July to 4 August, was marked by two deaths on 1 August, during a heatwave: the music stopped at midnight the following day, and the organisers announced tighter security for future editions.