NOVI SAD – About 620,000 festival fans and some 200 music experts and journalists have declared Serbia’s EXIT festival as Europe’s best major festival. The victory is all the more important as the Novi Sad festival was running in competition with a total of 360 European festivals. 

EXIT won first place in the category of major European festivals at a ceremony of Europe’s big festivals at a European Festival Awards ceremony for 2013 held on 14 January at the Eurosonic Noorderslag Festival in Groningen, the Netherlands.

EXIT won the award ahead of some of Europe’s biggest festivals such as Belgium’s Tomorrowland and the Sziget Festival in Hungary. Festival audiences from all of Europe together with the EFA jury, made up of prominent individuals from the festival industry, voted together to declare Serbia’s EXIT as Europe’s best festival.

The award was accepted in Groningen by the strategic director of the festival, Dušan Kovačević, who thanked the festival audiences and the jury members who had voted for ЕXIT.

“Some of you already know that ЕXIТ is a unique festival because it came about as a student movement for peace and liberty in Serbia and the Balkans. We believe that the social responsibility of the EXIT festival continues to be an important reason for our existence,” Kovačević said on the occasion. 

This is the first time ЕXIТ has won first place in competition with major European festivals since the European Festival Awards were established in 2010, although it was shortlisted every year so far.

A list of the award-winners is available on the official website of the European Festival Awards on http://eu.festivalawards.com/

In 2007, ЕXIT was declared the Best European Festival by another authority in the world of festivals, the UK Festival Awards. 

Source: House of Good News/ЕXIT