B’Estfest Misses Out Again

Romania’s B’Estfest, backed by globally known Dutch promoter Leon Ramakers, is missing out on 2015, prompting speculation that the 8-year-old festival may be gone for good.

What would have been in 2014.

The event missed out in 2010 and again in 2014, the latter because there was a lack of suitable headline acts. Since starting on the 30,000-capacity Romexpo site near the centre of the Romanian capital of Bucharest in 2007, the festival also moved site to a Greenfield site on the edge of Lake Pasarea.

In January of last year it was announced the festival had moved again, this time to the gardens of the Mogosoaia Palace. Two months later the festival was scrapped, with then-director festival director Guido Janssens telling Pollstar it hadn’t been possible to find headline acts that would do well in the market.

One of the main problems has been introducing a festival to a country that has no festival culture or heritage, resulting in a crowd that will buy a ticket but not bother turning up until it’s time for the international headline act.

“We decided not to do B’Estfest in Bucharest in 2015, but we still have plans to bring it back in the near future,” said festival director Laura Coroianu, who started the event with Ramakers and Janssens. “We invested a lot of heart and soul in this project across the years, not only money. Maybe it will return with a different format, maybe in a different location or city, with a different concept,” she said.

The most recent B’Estfest in 2013 had Texas, Chase & Status, Enter Shikari, Soilwork, The Heavy, and Tiamat.