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Pohoda Festival in Slovakia has been cancelled midway through after one of its tent stages collapsed, injuring 29 attendees.
Nearly 30,000 were in attendance at the festival, which is held near Trenčín airport in the north of the country.
According to the Slovak Spectator, strong winds and a severe storm caused one of the festival’s large tents, Aréna Slovenskej sporiteľne, to collapse, with dozens of festival-goers inside. See footage of the accident below.
The festival’s chief physician Jaroslav Vidan confirmed that 29 people had been injured by the accident late on Friday night (July 12). “Twenty-eight injuries were minor, mostly lacerations, and one injury was of moderate severity, involving a hip fracture,” he said, before adding that all those injured had been taken to hospital.
The festival confirmed that it had been cancelled at around midnight on Friday, writing on social media: “Based on the available information, the inspection of all structures could not be completed sooner than within 24 hours, which makes it impossible to continue the festival programme.”
“After carefully considering the time required to inspect the safety of festival structures, we have decided that we must end Pohoda 2024,” the organisers added.
The festival was due to finish on Saturday, including sets by artists including Nia Archives, Black Pumas, Ezra Collective, Mount Kimbie and LA Priest.
The dramatic weather had caused disruptions earlier in the day on Friday, with performances by Morcheeba and Royal Blood not taking place for safety reasons. The festival was suspended at 20:00, before the decision was made to shut it down four hours later.
Festival-goers had been warned not to stand near the tent’s poles due to the threat of lightning, but many people were thought to be seeking shelter from the storm in the tent.
The Slovakian bank Slovenská sporiteľňa, which sponsored the tent in question, paid for extra buses to take people off site, and some of the artists including Fallgrapp opted to waive their pay to help the festival financially.
Slovakian police also announced on Friday night that they had begun a criminal investigation into the collapse of the tent.
It is not the first time that such circumstances have struck Pohoda Festival: in 2009, two people were killed and dozens of others injured when a tent collapsed due to heavy winds causing a thunderstorm.
The firm Laudauer-Weihnachtscircus, who built the tent that collapsed that year, was charged with public endangerment and was forced to pay £28,000 to the festival in damages.