After tent stage collapse and cancellation, Pohoda Festival 2024 will soon inform about its “overall future”

Pohoda Festival, Slovakia’s biggest music event, was supposed to take place from Thursday (11 July 2024) to Saturday (13 July 2024), but had to cut its 2024 edition short on Friday (12 July 2024). After amongst others Go_A had played their set late Friday afternoon, strong winds and a severe storm later in the evening caused one of the large tents to collapse on the festival visitors, injuring 29 people. Most of the injuries are said to be minor, mostly lacerations, and all of those injured had been taken to the hospital. Video footage of the collapse can be seen below:

After the remaining programme for Friday, including the performance of Royal Blood, was cancelled, it was announced shortly afterwards that the programme for Saturday, including the performances of Emilíana Torrini and DEADLETTER, would no longer take place either:

“After careful consideration of the time constraints for inspecting the safety of the festival structures, we have decided that we must cancel Pohoda 2024. 13. July 2024. Based on the available information, inspecting all the structures could not be completed in less than 24 hours, which makes it impossible to continue with the festival programme. The safety of our guests is our priority, and therefore we believe that our decision, made with great regret, will be understood by everyone.”

– Pohoda Festival

After the cancellation and evacuation of the festival, the organisers of Pohoda Festival published a longer statement:

“Thank you to everyone who helped mitigate the effects of the extreme weather at Pohoda. […] We thank our visitors for the smooth evacuation, solidarity and support. We would like to thank the rescue teams – paramedics, meteorologists, police, municipal police, Fire and Rescue Corps, volunteer fire brigade from Opatovce and Selec, Ares security, our stewards, volunteers, members of the wider organisational team including parking attendants, wristband distributors, builders, cleaners, stage managers, helpers and bartenders. We would also like to thank the city of Trenčín and its inhabitants who offered their help to the festival visitors, as well as the people of Opatovce and Veľké Bierovce. We would like to thank SAD Trenčín, Slovak Lines, Railways of the Slovak Republic, and Slovenská sporiteľňa for organising special transport during the evacuation. We would also like to thank all our suppliers, partners, artists, non-profit organisations and catering teams for their understanding and various forms of assistance in dealing with the situation. Thank you for all the messages of support from those who attend the festival, but also from many who have never been. Due to the immense effort, dedication and support, the impact of Friday’s extreme storm has been minimised. Our thoughts are with all those injured and we wish them a speedy recovery. Our thoughts are also with all those who have been affected in any way. For those travelling home, we wish you a safe return. We miss you all greatly, but you have left behind a sense of hope. We are now focusing on the aftermath of the event and will be staying at Trenčín Airport for many days to pack up the prematurely ended Pohoda 2024. We will keep you updated on the next steps and the overall future of our festival. For now, we send a huge THANK YOU to all of you.” – Pohoda Festival

Pohoda Festival has been organised since 1997. Since 2004, the open air festival is held at Trenčín Airport, with up to 30,000 visitors. Just this year, Pohoda Festival was announced as the winner in the category “Best Medium-Sized Festival 2023” at the European Festival Awards. Last summer, other open air festivals such as Wacken Open Air 2023 in Northern Germany and MetalDays 2023 in Slovenia also had to face weather-related problems. Ticket presales for Pohoda Festival 2025 began with the start of Pohoda Festival 2024.