Tbilisi Open Air

Tbilisi Open Air is an international open-air music festival focusing on electronic and rock music. The event is held every spring or summer in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi. Since its inception in 2009, it has grown to become one of the biggest music festivals in the Caucasus region.

The inaugural Tbilisi Open Air was held from May 15-17, 2009. The concerts took place on Shardeni Street (a pedestrian street in the Old Town of Tbilisi) and at the local hippodrome. The festival featured 23 bands from 10 countries (Georgia, the UK, Russia, Germany, Poland, France, Italy, Iceland, Denmark, and Ukraine) and attracted about 35,000 attendees. It was the country’s biggest music festival since the Spring Rhythms. Tbilisi-80 Festival, commonly known as the 1980 Tbilisi Rock Festival.

Attendance at Tbilisi Open Air has varied over the years, primarily due to venue capacity, but it has never been lower than 10,000. An attendance record was set at the 2012 festival that attracted about 50,000 attendees. That year, Tbilisi Open Air was headlined by DDT, a well-known Russian rock band that is very popular in most of the former Soviet republics. So the attendance record is not surprising, considering that the headliner caused a lot of local interest.

Over the years, Tbilisi Open Air has hosted many well-known performers and bands from different countries, including Morcheeba, Infected Mushroom, Placebo, Deep Purple, Zemfira, Nino Katamadze, Loudspeakers, Dub FX, Moodorama, The Fades, Zoo Brazil, Black Strobe, Modeselektor, The Subways, Tricky, and others. Along with famous names, the festival always features emerging Georgian artists, helping them find new audiences.

The motto of Tbilisi One Air is “Music Breaks Free”. According to the festival team, freedom is the defining idea behind the event, which includes freedom from stress, cliches and social controls, freedom to create and express, and freedom to experience what is valued by every single one of us as individuals.

Although there are plenty of hotels and hostels in Tbilisi, a lot of festival-goers prefer to live at the campground site adjacent to the venue. They believe that camping alongside people from different countries is a unique experience which is just as important as musical performances. Tbilisi typically has good weather in summer, so the camping conditions are rather comfortable.