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It was with just a touch of pride that Hervé Castéran admitted that, “we used to have a strong reputation as the muddiest festival in France”. Hervé is Communications Director of Les Eurockéennes and the comparison with Glastonbury is one that he relishes.

Africtions is neither the largest nor the most established festival on the menu but, if it continues along the way it has been going, it may turn out to have some of the most lasting benefits of any.

Often it seems to be true that the less likely the location, the more interesting and daring is its festival. This is certainly the case with Palić, a small lakeside town a few kilometres from the Hungarian border in the northern Serbian province of Vojvodina.

The Babkarska Bystrica tour transferred its work out into the countryside, taking performers from all over the world into six small towns and villages.

The Athens Digital Arts Festival describes itself as celebrating 'digital culture through an annual gathering bringing together a global community of artists and audiences'.

One of the clever things about Dublin's 12 Points jazz festival is that it does not always happen in Dublin.

One of the most upmarket districts of Jutland is a surprising place to find Denmark's main festival of puppetry: the Festival of Wonder.

June is the month for festivals in Bulgaria's main seaside resort city of Varna, with a whole clutch of them coming together as Varna Summer.

It is one of the odder of life's coincidences that I should find myself writing this on the exact anniversary (the 22nd) of the day I started my all too brief time as Director of Utrecht Oude Muziek, probably the most comprehensive single city programme of music from mediaeval to classical times in the world.

Altofest is the antithesis of the usual big city festival. There are no parades, no great spectacular events in grand venues, no firework displays.

It was against conservative expectations in arts that Yvona Kreuzmannova, fresh from a year's scholarship in Paris, started the Tanec Dance Festival in Prague in 1991

To many the Edinburgh Fringe is the antithesis of a festival; uncurated, shambolic, insanely eclectic and limited only by the physical spaces able to pass the local Council's fire regulations. To others it is the ultimate extravaganza of democratic showmanship.