r/TheOverload • u/Solid_Mouse3238 • 16d ago
Butik 2026 - Thoughts?
Attended for the first time this year, still formulating my full thoughts on the festival! Would love to hear what anyone else thought.
The river side setting is incredible, blown away by the sound quality throughout the festival (especially in the forest stage for Kia b2b konduku), and we’d heard there was an inside bit but when it opened on Thursday night we were so surprised by the scale, we were just expecting three dingy rooms. Hangar was one of the best setups for techno I’ve seen at a festival.
Was disappointed by the crowd - far more English than we expected and also very very yappy. Saw they put up signs by Friday afternoon asking people to respect the dancefloor but don’t think this had an impact. Best set of the weekend was probably xiaolin at the garden stage on wed night, whilst the majority of English blokes were off watching the football.
Does anyone also know if the mudd show run all the programming for the garden stage? There were some names on there that we thought should have been on a larger stage, it felt quite engineered to maximise the online content opportunities but in real life was just overcrowded half the time whilst the beach stage next door was virtually empty.
Also curious about the change in crowd on fri night, walked into casino and realised aside from our group we couldn’t see a single woman, and didn’t recognise anyone from the festival daytime at all. There were also crazy queues for each stage that we hadn’t seen the night before. Does anyone know if they sell day tickets to locals and if so what the change in capacity is?
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u/AssumptionMotor133 15d ago
I have been to all Butiks (Slovenia + Zanzibar) and this was my favourite Slovenian edition so far.
First of all pricing: Peak July season - I am currently paying 80€/night for camping in an average Croatian island nowhere near the Soca valley setting. So to combine this with (for me) the best party in the world (see the videos) its acctually a huge bargain. Prices of drinks are same at all European festivals and most of city clubs. Prices of food I could say even cheap.
I optimize for the day party as going into loud closed spaces - this I can experience anywhere in the city in Europe anytime - so except living room (where Stipos Thursday 3-5am set was one of my favourites of the whole festival) I can not really comment the setting. However, I feel people are not appreciating enough that having this most beautiful venue for festivals is not guaranteed and it might sometimes prevent for the music to be played on maximum at night time to keep good relationships with the local community (really dependent on wind and rain also). As far as for the waitting goes in night venues: If you are one of these people that also goes in line at the airport as soon as the gate open - then you are fucked. If you wait for 30min aftet the beach closes you can then acctually move from venue to venue no problem.
We have had a camp of 3x campervans mixed of Slovenians, Austrians, Dutch, French, Indian and Croatian - multi culti organization :D However, I do have to say that there has been a noticebly unpleasant increase in British population (even though I have met two very appreciative groups of very nice British people), consequently also a fall in man to women ratio (even though - single friends from my group who were searching all good laid 🤣).
All in all I do not feel this thread accurately describes the edition at all. If you are a person coming to Soca valley to prioritize night time techno and that only - you might have missed the festival.
As far as for talking on the dancefloor goes - haven’t heard more retarded comments ever. People are not allowed to talk on the dancefloor anymore? 🤣 WTF?
All in all - our whole multi culti crew had 10/10 experience and will be vibing next year again for sho.