The largest, most popular and world-known traditional culture festival in the Baltic States offers insight into the brightest Latvian and foreign folk traditions, emphasizing the significance of traditional culture within the current cultural context. The festival highlights the playful and joyful potential of the traditional culture. It can serve as a uniting factor for all those willing to play, sing, or dance together or to interact in other aspects of the traditional culture. The International Folklore Festival "Baltica" aims to preserve, develop and popularize the traditional culture of Latvians, Livs, Latgallians and other nations, as well as the skills of intangible cultural heritage. It also seeks to uphold national moral values, promote spirituality, self-respect, unity across generations, and family traditions. The festival will bring together foreign ensembles from various continents and regions, folklore and ethnographic ensembles from Latvia, as well as applied arts studios, storytellers, craftsmen and individual artists.
This year, Baltica invites you to look at language in its broadest sense - to explore the language, patterns, rhythms, sounds and character of your own local area in words, music, song, dance, stories, crafts and the manner of playing music to remember the forgotten and recover the lost, to highlight the peculiar and strengthen the fragile.
On June 26 and 27, the International Baltica Folklore Festival will take to the streets of Riga, filling the Old Town with songs, music, dances, stories and the joy of meeting people.
Festival programme in Riga
26.06.
18.00-20.00 at Daile Music House
The Baltic Evening, featuring guests from Lithuania and Estonia, as well as folklore groups from all of Latvia's historical lands, will be a road map to the international folklore festival "Baltica", colouring the diversity of Latvian sound and outlining the tones of neighbouring languages.
20:00 at the folk club "Ala. Pagrabs"
concert by the festival's guest band "Yawar Peru" (Peru)
22:00 Āgenskalna Market
a lively evening of dances and traditional music
27.06.
12.00-17.00 Brīvības laukums, Doma laukums, Rātslaukums and Mazā guildes dārzs
Urban concerts will reveal the dialects, sounds and special linguistic heritage of Vidzeme, Zemgale, Selija, Kurzeme and Latgale.
17:00-18:30 Parade of festival participants
Route: Doma Square-Pulvertornis-Brīvības laukums-Rātslaukums
19:00-21:00 Festival Square (Mazā Jauniela 5)
Festival Opening concert "Coming Together. Joy. Sun"
22:00 Dancing and singing in Festival Square
22:00 Singing in the Small Guild