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Positivus Festival is an annual, three-day summer music and culture festival that was held in Salacgrīva, Latvia from 2007 to 2019. After two cancelled editions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the festival moved to the capital city of Riga from 2022.[1]
First held in 2007, Positivus combines a variety of genres, including indie, pop, folk, electronic and more styles in between. The festival is organized by Positivus Music. The festival always takes place during an extended weekend — from Thursday afternoon until Sunday morning of the third week of July. Positivus Festival is the largest music and arts festival in the Baltic States that takes place every year in the middle of July. Every year Positivus Festival is becoming more and more popular in Europe. It is a festival with international chart toppers and underground emerging talent set in an idyllic holiday location. Positivus Festival has been awarded the title "Best European Festival" and is mentioned in many shortlists as one of the top music festivals to visit in Europe.
Positivus festival has a vibe of Bohemian, friends, and family-oriented sort which weighs over the loud party vibe more common at music festivals. Positivus attendance has been around 30000 people for the last few years.
Over the years there have been up to six live stages featuring around 60–70 artists every year on average, most notably including Pixies, Alt-J, Ellie Goulding (multiple years), The Lumineers, Hot Chip, John Newman, Placebo, M83, Air, Iggy Pop, Tom Odell (multiple years), Elbow, Daughter, Kraftwerk, Bastille, The Kooks, Sigur Rós, Imagine Dragons, The XX, Hurts, OK Go, Muse and many others. The festival line-up usually consists of a number of chart topping artists as well as new and exciting performers from all over the world, with Latvian and Estonian artists having a strong presence. At its Salacgriva location, the festival took place only 12 km from the Estonian-Latvian border and therefore saw a strong attendance of Estonian visitors, musicians, caterers, and marketers as well as festival personnel, rendering Positivus an unofficial yearly meeting of the two neighbour countries. Estonians called it "Estonia's biggest music festival in Latvia".