Instead of the summer festival season, which has become unpredictable due to the pandemic, Zsolnay Heritage Management Non-profit Ltd. is going to hold the Zsolnay Light Festival at a safer time. Thus, the first and only light festival in the country will shine in Pécs from 30th September to 3rd October.

The festival, boasting with an impressive line-up, including many foreign performers, impressed as many as 80,000 visitors last time. When making the decision to change the date, the organisers kept the safety of both the artists and the audience in mind.

’However, if the regulations allow, we will not give up the summer festival season itself entirely. Still we consider it safer to start with smaller events and festivals, so there will be a gradual rise in the series of events, and we hope that the Zsolnay Light Festival, which attracts the largest crowd, will be held amidst calmer and safer conditions in the autumn’ said Péter Bleszity, CEO of Zsolnay Heritage Management Non-profit Ltd.

The Zsolnay Light Festival in Pécs offers a unique spectacle not seen anywhere else in Hungary. The best mapping artists in the world will enchant Pécs during the seven-time-awarded, impulsive festival adapting foreign trends. The buildings are going to be clad in a light robe and the streets carpeted with light installations – offering a magical experience as if you were entering a dream world. The four-day festival, which can be visited free of charge, the audience hungry for new experiences can enjoy  concerts, contemporary-circus and street-theatre performances as well.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Zsolnay Light Festival in Pécs was cancelled last year, but the organizer Zsolnay Heritage Management NKft. hopes the country’s first and only light festival can return this year. In the spirit of this, on March 1, it announced the international, Zsolnay Light Art Mapping Competition where prize money is awarded. The best mapping artists in the world are going to enchant the Cathedral of Pécs with their three-dimensional short films once again.

The competition is a completely unique attraction in the country, and is the undisputable highlight of the Zsolnay Light Festival held from July 1-4. The “canvas” of the mapping artists is the Cathedral of Pécs, whose facade, side nave, towers and roof are also covered by the creators with 3D mapping art creations.

- We are preparing to hold the Zsolnay Light Festival between 1 and 4 July this year; but, of course, only if the current regulations allow it. To avoid large crowds, we will be continuously screening the competition creations. If it is not possible to implement our original plan, we will try to find alternative solutions, be it by putting off the date of the festival or holding the competition online, said Péter Bleszity, Managing Director of Zsolnay Heritage Management.

The subject matter of the 2021 competition in Pécs is Lightmatter. The deadline for the first application round is April 5, 2021, and then during the pre-judging the best 10 works are going to be selected in two rounds. The selected works then are going to be presented at the Zsolnay Light Festival.

The final jury for the competition is going to be a five-member, international professional committee. This will be the first year when each shortlist creator will automatically receive € 1,000 prize money for their work, and it is also an innovation that the official jury will award only one prize. Besides, the work considered best by viewers will be rewarded with an People's Choice Award.

The professional partner of Zsolnay Light Art and the host of the competition - as in previous years - is the Hungarian visual artist group, Glowing Bulbs, boasting more than 20 years of history.

Aftermovie from 2019:

If it's up to us, Pécs will be the highlight of the summer again!

Unfortunately, due to the situation caused by COVID-19, the Zsolnay Light Festival in Pécs, planned for the summer of 2020, cannot take place in its usual form. The organizers, i.e. the staff of Zsolnay Heritage Management Ltd. have been working hard in recent weeks not to let the light go out and make the most of the situation.

As a result of this organizing work, the country's first light festival will make up for it next year: the usual, world-class series of programs, spectacular 3D mappings, street art productions and light attractions that enchant the entire city centre will return. The date of the festival is already available: it will take place July 1-4, 2021. The biggest light festival in the country is awaiting its visitors again!

At the same time, the audience will still have stunning light programs, as for the rest of the year, ZsÖK will enchant the nights in Pécs with smaller-scale but just as spectacular lighting events.

Zsolnay Light Festival is preparing for the future with a new type of series of programs

Due to the coronavirus situation causing radical changes worldwide and the unpredictability of the coming months, Zsolnay Light Festival, planned for the summer of 2020, is going to take place in a different form this year: Zsolnay Heritage Management Non-profit Ltd of Pécs, in collaboration with domestic and foreign artists, strives to organize several smaller-scale light events for the rest of the year.

Zsolnay Light Festival in Pécs, celebrating its 5th anniversary in 2020, is a four-day light festival of national and European significance that organically combines the dazzling world of light festivals with street-art productions, contemporary circus performances and music programs. After carefully assessing the possibilities the present situations can hold and taking them in consideration in a responsible manner, it became certain that in the current global crisis situation, ZsHM cannot organize the event at the same scale and with such complex programs as in previous years.

Therefore, the organizers decided that the Zsolnay Light Festival will be transformed this year. The decision is not resignation but adaptation; the creative work will not stop. The goal is now to create a series of programs that carry on the tradition, but on a smaller scale, that will continue to inspire thinking, convey values, entertain, delight, and be followed virtually as well. And all the events that cannot take place this year will be presented to the visitors in Pécs in July 2021.

We are constantly updating this year's events and preparations for next year. Please, keep track of them in the press and at the following sites:

www.fenyfesztival.hu

www.facebook.com/zsolnayfenyfesztival

1st place:
Team name: Michele Pusceddu - Italy
Title: Complementary Lights

2nd place:
Team name: TOOPFIRE - China
Title: The Heart of the Forest

3rd place:
Team name: ruestungsschmie.de - Germany
Title: TECHTONIC³

Winner of the audience award:
Team name: Michele Pusceddu - Italy
Title: Complementary Lights

Congratulations to this year's winners!

Other than the Zsolnay Light Art Mapping contestants works, there will be one more unique lightart on the walls of the Székesegyház: the world-famous 3D mapping artist, László Zsolt Bordos, brings us his beautiful work, Inertia.

The surfacemapping is made full by added robotlamps, this magnitude of lightart has not been at our festival so far.

You can watch it three times from June 28-30th, friday to sunday, every night at 23.50.