Untold: The Second Chapter

Written by Stefan Hadar

The first chapter

At the beginning of August 2015 the first chapter of “Untold” electronic music festival was already completed. The beautiful event took place in the city of Cluj, Romania. “Untold” festival is the biggest music festival in our home country and won the award for “Best European Major Festival” at European Festival Awards gala which took place in Groningen, Holland. Recognition came from the most important national representative of the marketing and communications industry, International Advertising Association Romania (IAA), which offered the festival title, Brand of the Year 2015.

Artists like David Guetta, Avicii, Armin van Burren and many others were present at the festival. The event lasted 4 days and 4 nights and had over 10 stages with an audience of about 300.000 people from all around the world.

However, the payment for the tickets was quite an unusual one. If you donated blood, you would have got a free ticket. This campaign was not meant just to save some lives, but also to support blood donations in general because Romania is at the bottom of the donating list in Europe, having only 1,7% blood donors. The “Pay with blood” campaign was launched on the 14th of July and over 900 Romanians paid their ticket through this method. Adrian Chereji, Director of Marketing and Communication of UNTOLD festival declared: “Through the campaign “Pay with blood” we would like to raise the awareness of the real need of blood at the country level and contribute to increasing the number of donors. At the same time, we want to encourage blood donation as a common practice, especially among young people in Romania.

The fact that hundreds of Romanians joined the initiative despite extremely high temperatures makes us confident in the existing potential of mobilizing this community-wide”.

The World Capital of Night and Music

After the great success of the first edition of the festival, due to the presence of great artists, unexpected big audience, positive feedback and international awards, UNTOLD is coming back this year from the 4th to 7th of August. The first 10.000 tickets were sold within the first 15 minutes. Of course, there are also VIP tickets (in limited number) and they cost around 500 RON. More information about this on untoldfestival.com

This year, big names will join the stage. Among them the top 5 DJ’s of the world: Armin van Buuren, Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike, Hardwell, Martin Garrix and Tiesto! But this is not everything! Afrojack, Parov Stelar, INNA, Scooter, Antonia and Routh 94 are just some of the names. More than 150 artists will be at the biggest European EDM (electronic dance music) festival. Beside the EDM artists, during the day, there will be live acts with the fans favorite bands & artists, who were able to vote who they wanted to see. The concerts will take place on many stages. So every day, from 18:00 until 23:00, on the Untold main stage, Ursus Untold Arena, there will be concerts given by international artists but also by fan favorite artists such as Faithless, Parov Stelar, Scooter, Clean Bandit, Kwabs, The Asteroids Galaxy Tour, Ella Eyre and James Arthur.

After 23:00 until morning, the stage will be “occupied” by the world’s most famous DJ’s. The techno-house music fans will have the chance to listen at the Polyvalent City Hall of Cluj artists with the same genre as Jamie Jones, Routh 94, Sasha, Sharam and, the first time in Romania, Dubfire with his project Live-Hybrid.

If you thought that this is everything, it isn’t! The organisers have also prepared a surprise for everyone who wants to visit Transylvania! A promotional video was made and Transylvania, “The land beyond the forest”, will be presented to the crowds. Besides, this beautiful place is also rated as Lonely Planet’s first place to visit in 2016. For the first time in the history of music festivals, the UNTOLD bracelet will also work as an entrance ticket to the most important sights such as castles and museums, and the organizers have already planned a visiting schedule. The places to be visited are: The Fortress of Alba Iulia, Bran Castle, Corvin Castle, The Turda Salt mine, the city of Sibiu which was also the European Capital of Culture in 2007, Viscri, Sighisoara, The Merry Cemetery of Sapanta and the Stream Train on Vaser Valley.