Every small town in Denmark has their own festival once a year and it’s usually the biggest event in that town. Pretty much everyone who lives nearby will usually go, so even a small place has a big event. The largest event in Denmark is surprisingly Vorbasse market, which as in the name, is a big market taking place in the small town of Vorbasse with more than 250.000 people attending each year.

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  1. Small towns and villages usually have a harvest fest (Erntedank), Schützenfest organised by the shooting guild and a festival organised by the local volunteer fire department. All are meant for you to get drunk.

    Larger anniversaries are often also celebrated, for example the 1050th “birthday” of our village, when it was first mentioned in some medieval document. Don’t know how the 1100th will be celebrated, since the character of the village changed a lot in the meantime.

    Larger towns often have similar festivals, but they are usually more confined to certain parts of the town.
    There are multiple volunteer fire brigades where I live now and they all have their own festival, which are coordinated with the other brigades.

  2. Our capital city has Tbilisoba including concerts, art fairs and food stands. It was invented some time in the 70s or 80s and is somewhat popular here. The government doesn’t seem to think it’s popular enough and spends every autumn aggressively advertising and promoting it. I haven’t heard towns and smaller cities having anything like that but, I’m assuming that there would at least be a few.

  3. Yes, between spring and autumn it’s very common for small towns to hold sagre di paese, normally celebrating a particular product of the territory or a traditional dish, e.g. the chili pepper festival in Diamante, Calabria, or the various sagre of the white truffle around North and Central Italy.

    In the South and the Center it’s also still very common to have town festivals dedicated to the patron saint of the town and the celebrations draw [massive crowds](https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Fsundaytimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2F74d898c4-89fe-11e9-8b21-ee1cb6566fbb.jpg?crop=2250%2C1500%2C0%2C0). Some of these “feste patronali” span more than one day, sometimes even a calendar spanning a week.

  4. Maybe not the smallest towns but many will have one. My town is about 1,300 people and we just had our town festival (Kirtag). Here’s a little article with some pics from a local paper: https://www.bvz.at/mattersburg/dreitaegiges-fest-anna-kirtag-der-drassburger-fussballer-378868168

    It’s 3 days long (Friday-Sunday). There was an auto scooter, a little carousel for 3-8 year olds, another ride for 10 yo-adult age and a stand where you’d throw darts at balloons and win prizes.

    Also a semi-big tent with tables to eat, drink and a stage for music (the local brass band) – see the pictures.

    Along with it a few football matches with teams of varying leagues and ages were played.

    Depending on the size of the town, these festivals are bigger or smaller. Some even last 10 days.

    It’s pretty much the same concept as the famous Oktoberfest you all know. Rides, entertainment, tents with food, drink and music. Only the size and duration will vary.

  5. Loads of places have Kirmes/Kirchweih/Kerb or whatever it’s called regionally and that’s traditionally a celebration of the day a church was inaugurated. In most places, this turned into a multiple day festival with lots of alcohol, food stands, shooting stands, amusement rides etc. In more rural regions, often every village has their own and you can spend the whole summer going to these festivals. Some of them are simply called Jahrmarkt, that’s a market that returns every year.
    There’s also places that have wine festivals (in wine regions of course) where pretty much the same happens, with a focus on wine though.

  6. The ***Fête de la Musique*** (or Music Day in English) is the only national celebration that comes to mind, where every major city organizes its events. However, France still holds onto many regional cultures, and each region has its own annual festivals and celebrations (and would take too long to list them).

    If you want to know more, [here](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat%C3%A9gorie:F%C3%AAte_traditionnelle_en_France_par_r%C3%A9gion) is a non-exhaustive page with all the regional festivals by region

  7. For the local communities that arrange them and their surroundings it can be a very big deal. There will hopefully be some visitors from other parts of the country or at least region. It’s usually one of the few things that happens during a year in many places.

  8. Smaller places and villages have fire department festivals, bigger ones usually have themed festivals. Ribnica for example has a wooden products festival, Radovljica chocolate festival, Goriška brda cherry and wine festivals,…

  9. I wouldn’t say they’re huge events in most places but most of the time they still draw a bit of a crowd of local people. In my town the sort of big events are the King’s Day market on April 27th, then the fun fair comes some time in spring, there’s the annual market in late summer and then the Christmas market some time in December.

  10. In Poland villages have harvest festivals in August/early September (called Dożynki) with some traditions that date back to pre-Christian times. Local volunteer fire brigades are often included in the celebrations and folk groups as well.

    As for towns they also have summer festivals, that often last several days and include open air concerts, workshops, fairs, events for children etc. They’re usually named “Dni miasta” or “Święto miasta” (Days/Holiday of ‘insert-town’s-name’).

  11. Croatian Town called Vinkovci has an autmn folklore festival called Vinkovačke jeseni (Vinkovci autmn, but in plural in native language). It started in 1966 as an autmn harvest festival and was only stopped in 90s because of the war that was happening in Croatia, but was resumed shortly after. It became one of the biggest folklore festivals in Croatia and the biggest one in the continental part of Croatia. It lasts for 10 days with the main events in the last three days. You can see and buy handwork and homemade products from the town and its surrounding villages. There are concerts of (usually) popular singers from Croatia after the folklore dances from all over Croatia (and sometimes neighbouring countries) that are performed to the public on stage. Dances are performed by amateur groups called Kulturno Umjetnička Društva (folklore societies) and ensembles, and on the last day, judge panel cones together and announces a winner for the best performance, which includes not only the dance itself, but the national costume accuracy and tidiness. Societies and ensembles from Vinkovci can’t win a best performance award, which is reserved for guests.

  12. I suppose our equivalents would either be highland games (sporting events, dancing, music and general Scottishy things) or agricultural shows (livestock showing, stuff about tractors, working dog demonstrations, dog shows, food stalls etc). This is more based around where I live, maybe they have different sorts of things in the more urbanised areas though.

  13. I’d say they are rather common also in Finland. However at the moment there is one in my district called [Kallio Block Party.](https://www.kallioblockparty.org/) It’s a free street party in the area of two city blocks of [Kallio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kallio) and the crossing streets. There are something like 9 DJ booths in the crossings where they play EDM music. My guesstimate about the audience is something like >10000. Here are some of pictures: [Vaasankatu](https://imgur.com/SHa30LS) and [Helsinginkatu.](https://imgur.com/iMPUQog)

  14. Yes, lots of towns in Greece have festivals, particularly in the warmer months. It can be a music festival, arts festival, theater festival, wine harvest festival, all kinds of things. But by far the most common is the feast day of the patron saint of the town. And many towns will have a big festival for Assumption of Mary, August 15th.

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