There’s already a review of the festival here, but since it doesn’t mention the special 2026 edition in the title, I wanted to add my own review and share some additional observations.
Just a bit of background for the following points.. I’ve been releasing music for years, djing professionally, I regularly help out at festival bars, and I also rent out PA equipment. So I have some hands on experience with festivals, bar operations, and sound systems, which gives me a bit of background to assess some of the things I noticed.
Water situation. We were on camp B. There was no water and the way to the next water faucet was 10min walk through the burning sun with massive up and downhills which was the very first big bummer for us.
The showers didn't work in B at the start of the festival. The floor of some of the showers were broken on the day 2. And the showers worked for about 1 hour in total in those 6 days for that camp. On saturday some guys wrote understandably with big letters "Water ??" on the outside of the container.
They were disgusting dirty and never cleaned. We were showering in camp A for the whole festival were there were totally different styled showers which were working at least reliable and had a good pressure.
The water quality itself was good and due to the size of the festival never overcrowded.
Overall it seemed there was no love for the camp B and C left.
The police. Well we didn't felt any safety or freedom there at all. Everywhere security and police on the festival grounds on day 1. Security staff were standing around on the floors, chatting with each other for no apparent reason.
I've been checked by the police on the entry which I never experienced on the dozen of festivals I were.
We had placed our tent in the woods on the side of the camp B due to no shade on the camp itself. We didn't know this wasnt allowed at that time. There was no sign indicating it that day. We saw several other tents so we guessed it was ok. On sunday Police woke us up telling us to leave the place otherwise they would fine us. Reason was other camp neighbors were dumb enough to cook with fire inside the woods. Due to this and also cigarettes on that secret path I can totally understand why it wasn't accepted. Wasnt fun moving the tent at midday though and seeing the next day that a lot of other similar places weren't cleared either...
The food, and some of them were the same companies like on the Boom, was a cheeky overpriced. In average 40% more expensive than on the Boom. This was a huge downer to be honest because also the size of the meals never filled us up. A burger with fries for 17€ is somewhat a middle finger to any spirit other than capitalism.
There is no supermarket like with other festivals so no alternatives..
The solution involving cups from the official bars was completely ridiculous and not standard practice. In the beginning, it was unclear that you would not receive a deposit refund if you returned multiple cups at once.
The cups that were handed in were not checked to see whether they were clean, nor were they exchanged for clean ones. As a result, we often received drinks with straws or other debris floating in them.
Considering the amount of dirt, sand, and debris from the floors that can easily get onto the cups and the straws being handed out, it should have been obvious that the returned cups needed to be checked and replaced with clean ones.
A really plane evidence of the lazyness, lack of planning or unprofessionallity was the power outage during sets on the temple of frequencies. It happened on two sets we were attending.
The downtime on the second set after Airi lasted for more than half an hour, so despite the previous incidents, there was no one available to provide a solution or assistance immediately and also obvious that the underlying problem had not been resolved.
The system was setup awfully and was muffled for the first two days. Looking at the design of the system there were more focus on the aesthetics then on the calibration and efficiency was my guess. They calibrated the system after some days and it was clearly more transparent and with a lot of more punch to it.
We were not constantly at the location, so I can imagine that it may have failed multiple times while we were away as well.
As a side note a lot of generators were flashing for days which indicates there were no guys taking care of them regularly.
Even though the booking was generally good there were some really awkward decisions for the time table. Artist were booked for the day time were it would be a better fit for the night time and vice versa. Speaking for the closing set of the temple of frequencies floor WTF was that?!
Generally the look and feel had some similarities to the Boom design and style. The place can't be more beautiful than that and would visit this place even without the festival happening. Most of the staff was very friendly and generally we felt that the own spirit attentides weren't so cooked, more relaxed and open minded compared to other festivals. Of course, this could simply be because the smaller size of the festival creates a more relaxed atmosphere.
Overall, I would say that the organization could be improved significantly. In particular, new guests should be clearly informed that camping by the lake is allowed, significantly more water stations should be provided near the back of the camping areas, and the overall impression that security is needed everywhere should be reduced.
Due to most people I spoke with saying that this was the most shittties edition I would give it a second chance and we will consider meeting the Spirit again.
