What happened at the Pohoda Festival in Slovakia? Programme announces cancellation midway after tent stage collapse, injuring 29 attendees

The Pohoda Festival started on July 11, 2024 at the Airport Trencin in Trencin, Slovakia. From the get-go, the festival was met with weather challenges, with severe weather warnings forcing a early closure of the event on its second day after one of the larger tents of the festival, Aréna Slovenskej sporiteľne, collapsed and injured 29 people.

According to a statement released to the Slovak Spectator paper by the festival's chief doctor, Jaroslav Vidan, the injured people had all been taken to the hospital and the injuries ranged lacerations to hip fracture:

“Twenty-eight injuries were minor, mostly lacerations, and one injury was of moderate severity, involving a hip fracture.”

The tent, built by an unnamed Danish company, collapsed after the control systems for it went down due to the storm. No fatalities have occured due to the incident as of the writing of this article and the festival announced its cancellation soon after the tent collapsed on July 12, 2024 via a post on their official Instagram page:

"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."

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More on Pohoda Festival 2024's cancellation

The festival made a separate announcement during the final stages of the evacuation of attendees from the festival grounds, thanking everyone for their support and understanding:

"Thank you to everyone who helped mitigate the effects of extreme weather in Pohoda.The Pohoda festival area is evacuated, the last three cars in the parking lot are waiting for their chauffeurs.We thank our visitors for the smooth evacuation process, togetherness and support..."

The organisers later added in the anouncement:

"Thank you for all the expressions of support from the people who go to the festival but also from the many who have never been.Thanks to great commitment, selflessness and help, the consequences of the event associated with Friday's extreme storm were kept to a minimum."

The cancelled date would have featured performances by acts such as Black Pumas, Ezra Collective, Nia Archives and more. Performances by Morcheeba and Royal Blood were also cancelled.

The tent collapse has led to the start of a criminal investigation into the matter by the Slovakian police, while the tent's sponsor Slovenská sporiteľňa bank, paid for extra transportation for the evacuation. Some acts such as Fallgrapp have also reportedly waived their fees to help the festival through this incident.

This is the second time that an incident like this has happened at the Pohoda Festival. In the 2009 edition of the festival, a heavy storm caused a tent to collapse, killing two people and injuring more than 40 others. The tent that collapsed that year was built by Laudauer-Weihnachtscircus.

The firm was later charged with public endangerment and had to pay damages amounting to several thousand euros to the festival, with the prosecution of the company's CEO Jakob Bossert suspended in 2019.

While the tent that collapsed this year was built by an unnamed Danish Company, Pohoda Festival itself currently operates with the Kayam company, which also supplies tents for festivals such as Glastonbury Festival and Roskilde Festival.

The 2024 edition was Pohoda Festival's 27th edition overall, with the festival having been first held in 1997 and annually ever since except for the 2020 edition, which cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.