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Everyone is guaranteed to find the right music for their musical taste and much more besides.

The Campus Festival 2022 was filled to capacity and with an increased area compared to the previous year. After a two-year break, Debrecen welcomed back some of the best bands and stars of the Hungarian popular music scene, as well as international stars. The result was a record-breaking event.

This year, Campus Festival will take place in the city between 19th-23rd of July. The jubilee event will take place over four evenings in the country’s best-equipped and shadiest large-scale festival venue. Twenty programme venues and many other attractions await you. The Campus Festival is now one of Hungary’s biggest summer cultural events, attracting around 27,000 visitors at its launch and 116,000 last year. In addition to the best of Hungary’s music scene, foreign performers will once again be among the acts, with 315 musical performances taking place over the four days.

The introductory briefing of the event started on a tram to the venue. Here, festival director Péter Miklósvölgyi said: they are currently at 120% of last year’s ticket sales.

Zoltán Bács, the Chancellor of the University of Debrecen, said at the Water Tower that in the fifteen years of its existence, the Campus Festival has developed into a festival that can now count on national and even international interest.

Mayor of Debrecen László Papp said: the city fully embraces the event, including from the municipal side. “The success of the festival, which is characterised by the fact that many residents of the host town align their summer holidays, taking into consideration the Campus Festival dates,” the mayor said.

László Papp added: Campus is now the most prestigious festival of popular music in our country, and he also said that he would probably be there for Parov Stelar’s concert. And the sales figures show that there will be around 110,000 people besides him. So this year’s Campus could be more successful than any previous one.

Lajos Kósa, Fidesz-KDNP, said this is the twenty-first festival, as the event’s maiden name was Vekeri in 2001. Back then, it seemed that we were doing well at Vekeri, even though the conditions were unqualified when it wasn’t raining, Lajos Kósa recalled. Choosing the Nagyerdei venue was the best decision, and Campus has survived many big-name events and is now one of the leading festivals in Hungary that relies heavily on the local community, the people of Debrecen. 

Speaking about the future, Lajos Kósa said: “We will get to the point where we can organise a big concert in the Nagyerdei Stadium.

The Campus is where most of the national acts will be performed, so everyone is guaranteed to find a programme of interest. With the six biggest music venues now available on a daily basis, Campus will be the most diverse and enterprising music festival, catering for all tastes from pop to underground.

The headliners of the four days of the Metal-Sheet Big Stage will be the Bagossy Brothers, Robin Schulz, Parov Stelar and Majka, with the traditional Tankcsapda concert on Friday evening from 8:15 p.m.

Nostalgia lovers must wait until Saturday evening when György Korda and Klári Balázs will perform on the BMW Stage. The Welding Rock Arena offers a wide range of the genre, with Hungarian blues great Gyula Bill Deák performing there on Saturday, but on the same day, fans of sophisticated blues-rock music can listen to “Godfater” led by Tibor Tátrai and the Tamás Takács Dirty Blues Band, while metal music fans can tune in to Ossian and Depression on Friday. This year, the organisers have again put a lot of emphasis on supporting bands and singers from the region of Hajdú-Bihar, with around 30 local and Debrecen-based bands and artists getting the chance to perform on 60 stages at Made in Debrecen, but a total of 70 Debrecen bands and artists will be performing.

The Radio 1 Stage will host Attila Bárány, Cooky, P. G. Hamvai and Viki Metzker, among others, while the sound of Vera Tóth will be heard on the podium of the University Square.

The Campus is not just about music; it will also feature various artistic programmes. Dance and movement groups will perform at the Performance Place, including the Debrecen-based Modern Dance and Games Studio. The Campus will also be special because of the University of Debrecen, which will present its preparatory programme for secondary school students, KEEP. In the Civil Village, around fifty organisations will be present.

It is also important to note that the Campus will be cashless, so visitors can pay by credit card or by using the festival card.

The full programme is available here

Source: debrecen.hu (dehir.hu) | Photo credit: debrecen.hu