In the field of European culture the name of Sziget Festival holds an important place. This is one of the biggest cultural and music festivals in Europe. This festival was started in the year 1993 in the capital city of Hungary, Budapest by Müller Péter Sziámi (Hungarian Musician) and his friend Gerendai Károly for the students of the universe. Today it has become one of the famous European rock festivals. This week long festival takes place every year in the month of August with people from all over world especially from West Europe taking part in the festival. Sziget festival is not confined among the people of Hungary any more; it is a world class festival now. It is a cultural extravaganza with day and night cultural activities and performances. It is a place for people of all age group, no matter how old you are, you are free to enjoy what you like. Budapest is itself a beautiful city and to visit the place during the festival is like adding extra cream to the pie.

Highlights of the Sziget Festival are as follows:

Approximately 43000 people turned up in the first year of the festival although only musicians from Hungry performed then during the first year of the festival.

Sziget often know as the island of freedom not because of the big size of the island but because of the huge number of program venues. There are around 60 program venues with different names. Along with the big stages there are some small stages which are known as the soul of the Sziget.
It is a platform for all types of music one can imagine right from the famous names of the international rock/pop bands to electronic music, jazz, blues, heavy metal, folk and even classical genres. But till 2000 it was totally a rock music festival.

One of the founders of this cultural feast Gerendai Károly, was a billboard gluer when he started his career and today he is a billionaire. It needs to mention here that he never got any higher education.

Both the founder members of the festival were totally bankrupt after the second festival and it took three years to regain the losses.

According to a report people from 69 countries attended the festival in 2013.

Last year 52 countries from all over the world performed on the festival. To name a few are: Australia, Argentina, Kenya, India, Singapore, South Africa, Pakistan and many more.

The tent in the festival is very massive and a place to chill out with lots and lots of sofas and bean bags and computers for the use of the public.
There is party train service available in this festival which transports people from all over the world.

The highest attendance till date was on 2009 with 390,000 visitors.

Sziget Festival of music offers more than only music to the people. Visitors can enjoy many other activities like dance, theatre, cinema, tattooing, football, tennis, rowing some more. It has received European Festivals award in 2012 under the category of Best Major European Festival.