FESTIVAL REPORT: Kosmos Festival 2024

July means that it’s time for my very favorite summer event, which is, of course, Kosmos Festival. In the usual location of Närhilä, Ristiina, this year’s festival took place over July 18th-21st, 2024. While the gathering of electronic tribes has some of the best music around, that’s not what I look at when I book my tickets… Kosmos is one of those festivals that you commit to just because of the beautiful atmosphere and ambience of the whole festival and its attendees. So regardless of whether or not I would be writing about the festival this year, I would definitely be attending no matter what—Kosmos personally feels like a place that I want to always return to if it’s humanly possible.

Read the report from 2023 here!

How do I really start this festival report? Ultimately, I feel like this is a love letter blog to Kosmos Festival. There’s just something about the event that’s wrapped in the location, the art, the music, and the Oasis that makes it something truly extraordinary and unlike any other festival around (at least that I’ve attended). Whether you’re there completely au naturelle, if you’re there to party hard and dance all weekend, or you’re attending for a spiritual reset in your life, there’s something to be found. I’m convinced that this is the most open and warm place in all of Finland, the one space where strangers aren’t always quite so afraid to smile and talk and engage with one another.

We arrived fairly early on Thursday in order to beat the buses to the campsite, which means good camping spaces and terrible parking spots, alas. We had a bit of a rocky start as we were immediately booted from our chosen spot by a guy who insisted that he had reserved the spot we were setting up in for his friends, despite it not being marked and nobody ever actually moving into the spot we had chosen over the weekend. It was okay that we moved though, because they were blasting music most of the weekend and we do like to sleep once in a while. It was a bit strange, though, to see that they seemed to have made an effort to create a considerable yksityisalue [private space] for them and their friends, despite the festival literally saying to not go overboard with campsite reservations this year. This was a huge chunk of space that I found far beyond reasonable, but hey, in the end we were pretty happy with where we ended up, so it wasn’t the end of the world.

After exchanging our wristbands and upgrading my partner-in-crime’s ticket so he could come in with me a day early, we noticed that there was a bit of a delay in the gates opening—word going around was that they were waiting for something or someone to show up. People were pretty chill about waiting though and the delay was only 10 minutes, which isn’t bad at all. We did our preliminary wander of the festival area to check out the artwork and see what was new this time around. We did plan to attend the opening ceremony but when I got there, it seemed to be quite formal and serious, so I didn’t want to be disrespectful by interrupting since I was a bit late. I’ve loved the festival artwork every year, but I felt particularly elated about it this time around, as it was very organic and forest-related this year, at least in the path that runs from Spacetime to the Oasis, as well as parts of the Mystic Gallery. It seemed as though a lot of it could just be left where it was after the festival, because it was made of organic material that doesn’t harm the environment. We did multiple walks, day and night, through the festival area, just to take it all in and I have to say that the juxtaposition of the natural forest with modern psychedelic art is something truly special and magnificent to behold.

We listened to (and enjoyed) a fair bit of Nebula Meltdown’s set from the forest chill space behind the Vortex stage, doing breath work and body maintenance, while also enjoying the tightrope walkers doing a variety of balancing exercises—they were a general highlight of the weekend and I enjoyed watching them, especially the ones who dared to go up to the top of the trees—incredible skill!

We browsed all of the stages, though Levitation Station remains a bit too intense for us chill, slow folks; Gravity often has the same effect, being quite hi-fi, high-energy, high intensity. There was some general consensus that the new setup along the side of Spacetime was inferior to the previous years’ chillout dome. They’ve crafted a magnificent wooden platform (you could tell it was fresh because it smelled amazing), but there’s only a half dome now and no nice cushions or anything like they used to have, and I do agree that it was not as comfortable as it was in previous years.

We called it an early night on Thursday, since we wanted to save our energy for our big party night the next day. We were also planning to check out Luomuhappo, who was on the paper schedule for 5.30; we set an alarm for 5.00 but it was absolutely pouring rain, so we ended up skipping it, but it was apparently good that we did because the electronic timetable in the event app had that set listed at 2.30. Quite strange… perhaps there was a change of schedule but nobody seemed to be informing anyone about it or saying that there were changes?

Friday promised (and delivered) a great deal of rain, so fortunately we both have waterproof shoes (8000 Kicks—check’em out if you want waterproof hemp sneakers that’ll last you through a wet and muddy festival; I had dry feet all weekend, except for the part of Friday when I was barefoot, of course). We were up fairly early, around 9.00-10.00 on Friday and went to wander and spent some time chilling in the Oasis during the rain, chatting with a friendly fellow who seemed to be looking for company with his breakfast. Oasis is such a wonderful environment in general, with the art and colors and ambience, and I wasn’t sure if the fountain in one sitting area was a new addition this year; at least I don’t remember it being there last year.

There was a fantastic mood for dancing over at the Vortex stage and we enjoyed the sets from both Ambler and Pootis in the coming and going rain, and then when we got too wet, we went over to Spacetime for the slow, chill psytrance-y music from Xylem. Tim Duster had to cancel at the last moment it seems (thanks to the folks in the Kosmos Family for letting me know!), but his replacement, Jazuur Space Club, in his black-and-white jester/The Crow-like face paint, ended up being another highlight, with a bit of a heavier sound, what with the electric guitar he had up in the booth with him. We also caught From Grotto on the Asteroid stage, in part because they were probably the only band this year I was familiar with, but also because having a bit of psychedelic rock was a nice change of pace from the heavy electronica going on everywhere else. This was the first place we found Kupla Kopla as well, with one fellow I recognized from last year blowing bubbles from his soapy hands again.

Not knowing the artists, it makes the festival easy to browse and explore. The folks who know the scene better than I do were really excited to see 1200 Micrograms, who is an older fellow who’s apparently been DJing these sorts of events for 50 or so years. He had a very cool set and really brought a massive crowd out at 19.30 on Friday. I was amused to find that he had sampled quite a few Iron Maiden songs in his set, so I got a bit of my own nostalgia in there.

I hate to admit that I missed most of the Kosmos Circus on Friday, spending more time at Spacetime and Vortex, but I did really want to see Safa Solati’s whirling fire skirt performance and managed to make it over in time to check it out—it was very cool and I am endlessly awed by someone who can spin in circles for 5 minutes straight without falling over and/or vomiting afterwards. If I have one minor complaint about the Circus, it was the host… she really seemed out of her element as a ringmaster. She never seemed sure of what to say when there was space to fill, she didn’t seem at all familiar with the artists she was introducing or what they were about to do (regardless of which language she was speaking in), and she only got Safa’s name correct once in about six attempts… in the future, I would suggest doing some prep work to get to know who and what is coming up, so it doesn’t seem so much like uncomfortable/awkward rambling. She was a fun fire dancer to though, when she kicked off the jam on Saturday.

After bouncing from Spacetime and Vortex for a while, we then made sure to catch DJ Hapan Korppu. I had been really enthusiastic to catch their set because I see them around quite regularly—I think last year they had just randomly walked up to me and given me a sticker, which is exactly the sort of thing that sticks with me and makes me smile. Their set was very intense and upbeat and they had a few guys up in the booth with them, possibly helping? They looked like they were having an absolute blast up there, which made it all the more fun to watch. Worth mentioning, too, that I absolutely loved the new design for the Gravity stage—it’s my second favorite to look at after Spacetime, with Vortex in a close third.

We caught a few of the late night shows around the festival and enjoyed the way the artwork comes to life in the evenings, but I did notice that the bathrooms became somewhat of a nightmare. They don’t seem to refill the toilet paper often (I do make a point of bringing a roll or two to festivals for this reason, but I felt like I should be doling out TP at the toilets just to help people out). Pair that with the lack of hand sanitizer that I’m reasonably sure wasn’t refilled at all throughout the weekend and it made visiting the WC the sort of event where you need to mentally prepare yourself for the horrors to come. I had said last year that they could stand to have a few more toilets by the first aid booth, because there’s space and the septic truck could hopefully use the road there. At least there were more toilets outside the festival entrance, but… more is more when it comes to that sort of thing and while they moved the toilets outside to a better place, I still think there should be more. On the flipside of that, the water queues this year were notably shorter. There were three taps this time, so perhaps that’s why? Last year there had been about a 30 minute queue for water at its worst and there were only two faucets, but I at least personally never saw the queue crossing the bazaar this year, which is awesome.

We chilled at Vortex and wandered the festival area, enjoying it as best as we could, until our stamina ran out. Ironically, we were in bed right at 4.20 on Friday, which is optimal for me because I enjoy the night life best when the black lights activate and that’s around when it starts to get light out again at this time of year.

Admittedly, I am a bit of an old fart and I could quite easily go home on Saturday, but Kosmos is such a special place that I do feel like I need to be there the whole weekend to absorb as much of the environment and culture as I can, while I can. It’s also really soothing to be in a place where there’s no hurry to be anywhere, no need to be online, you can just sit and be and observe without stress, which is something I need.

I got the impression that the music was not booming as intensely this year as it was last year. In 2023, there had been bass thumping so heavily all weekend that I had friends who needed to go all the way down to the Meadow/Lagoon where the lake is to get some distance from the beat. This year, the mornings felt largely peaceful and even Vortex had breaks. There were a few times when we couldn’t hear music almost at all from the campsite. Personally, I don’t mind the beat but for those who tend to get overstimulated, this was probably a nice change of pace. The first thing we did on Saturday was make our way down to the lake for a refreshing wash. The sauna and showers were busy, so we had a little swim and enjoyed watching Hoopingfairy’s hula hoop workshop, while we saw a young woman getting her head shaved in the grass—cool!

After that, we headed back to our campsite to re-gather ourselves before heading in. Another event on my try-not-to-miss list was Vala Shai’s relaxing ambient soundscape set at the Venus Temple (clever wordplay on valashai [whale shark], by the way!). We spent an hour there breathing and enjoying the gentle and soothing ambient music and we particularly enjoyed the way some of the sounds moved around the room; I opened my eyes at one point to see that he was moving silently around the dome, shaking leafy birch branches over everyone individually, which created such a cool surround-sound experience. I had also never looked up in that area before and found that it had great ceiling art—never forget to look up (I could say the same for the bar/food tent)! We also missed the last of the heavy rainfall while in the Venus Temple, which was a pleasant bonus.

We had hoped to attend some yoga sessions but were too exhausted to attend any of the classes (though I did audit the Ashtanga class from a little ways away), but allowed ourselves some mercy because we had done a lot and spent most of our time inside the festival area. There were a lot of workshops that seemed very interesting, so hopefully the ones who attended enjoyed them. I’d love to check out a cacao circle in the future, or the calming salt ceremony, but I found it hard to commit to the length of some of them (a few coincided with artists or other things we wanted to see), and I didn’t want to be disrespectful by “just stopping by” and not really participating, especially if they were inside a tent, like Venus. We did sit by Elsi Valeriana’s Introduction to Chaos Magick though, which was in the Solar Temple, so we were able to sit outside on the bench and listen from afar; it was in Finnish, so I could only follow so much, but it was a good talk about connecting to the energy within yourself and your surroundings.

I did notice another strange anomaly on the app, which mentioned a “Moon stage,” but we couldn’t find a Moon stage anywhere at the event; we did find a Star stage though that wasn’t included in the app, which seemed to be hosting the Moon stage’s events, so mystery solved, but this did cause some confusion a couple of times.

On Saturday, we wandered by Aaro Peltosen Mielikuvitusyhtye on the Asteroid stage, once again with Kupla Kopla, though this time the latter had more performers: two people with the big bubble sticks, one with a bubble gun, and one that I recognized as Riikka Arte, who has done the Labyrinth of Love artwork that was seen at many places in recent years, like the 2022 Helsinki Psych Fest and the 2023 forest art path at Kosmos. She’s a brilliant painter and performer, so it’s always lovely to see her and her wild, wonderful energy out and about, always smiling so widely. The band were interesting too, sounding a bit like Jim Morrison (slurring included), with a rather psych-rock-meets-flower-child type of music that was pretty fun to see; I particularly enjoyed the woman in the vintage ‘60s hippy dress doing backing vocals because she looked like she was having a lot of fun.

Now, my big desire on Saturday was to watch the Circus for as long as I possibly could. Earlier in the weekend, I hadn’t realized that the Circus doesn’t go on for particularly long (meaning, while every other stage runs maybe 16-24 hours a day, the Circus is only 4 or so hours on two evenings). I was really beating myself up for missing Roihu (who were my favorites last year) and Kupla Kopla on Friday by not realizing the Circus was only running for a few hours, so I watched the entire set this time, really quite enraptured (minus Jyri Heiskanen, whose pole dance set I mostly missed because I needed to visit the WC). It’s also worth shouting out the folks over at the Wheel of Death near Gravity, of whom we caught a bit on Friday and a longer performance from on Saturday—what a cool and fun use of motion. Perhaps one day I’ll strap in, as the people who get a ride on the wheel always look like they’re having a blast and are so exhilarated afterwards.

Back at the Circus though, Hobutoh started with a very eerie slow-motion performance that felt like a disturbing pagan ritual, which took the better part of half an hour as they explored the space around the Circus dome. It was fascinating to watch them jerk and twitch around, as though in a combination of bliss and pain. Kareliantuli put on an amazing silk show, and joined the fire jam later; Miia Haanpää was also brilliant in the silks and did a fun team performance with her partner, Tuukka Tamminen, a bit later. Dancing Mona Lisa had a fun set in the silks (ending with a big carrot), while I think I remembered Valosirkus Spektri and maybe even Valoilmiö from last year and they upheld my fascinated impression, as did Avaruusronja, who had LED fans for her performance and a gorgeous Indian outfit. There were a few dance sets on the poles, the first by Stargazers and the second by the aforementioned Jyri Heiskanen, but there were also dance performances without any bells and whistles, like the very trippy Galactic Butt Hoopligans, who surprised me by not having hoops in their set, but were rather more like strange sentient sock puppets. It was creepy and wonderful. Sonja Heikkilä had a very unique performance, adding dance moves to extreme flexibility and contortion, while the Nebula Aerial Duo put on one of the most amazingly connected partner dances in the aerial silks, sharing a hula hoop—utterly brilliant! And then, the fire dancers. I could spend the rest of my life watching fire dancers. Generally speaking, I just love watching the precision and skill that these performers put into their shows. It’s not necessarily about performing flawlessly, as the fire dancers’ ability to recover from fumbles is always beyond exceptional (and I’d rather see someone drop something than get lit on fire, let’s be fair). They were all absolutely amazing but I was particularly enraptured by Minttu Asikainen’s burning hoop performance, the way Janne from TuliZukka moved in a low ‘n’ slow flow, a duo who were sharing a burning pole between them, Matias juggling fire balls with almost lazy ease of movement, or how Jaska (I believe also from TuliZukka) was moving the burning poles all over his body… I even saw him dancing it across his face at one point. There was a woman from the Estonian group too (Zerkala, I think they were called) with green dreadlocks who was all full of skill and smiles every time she was out there; I think I missed her in burning butterfly wings on Friday, sadly, or so some reels tell me. Also, shout-out to Papa Psy who was doing the music in the fire jam, as it helped set a wonderful stage. I need to make sure I don’t miss the Circus at all next year because fire dancers are truly just so friggin’ cool.

After watching the fire jam for the better part of an hour, which included one fellow that I’m sure I recognized from Roihu, one of Oasis’ coordinators (Laura), and a few others who hadn’t been performing or fire dancing in their own sets that night, it was time to go take my nighttime photos, since I decided to disconnect on Friday and not bring my phone with me to the festival grounds. It’s worth mentioning in more detail that the new artwork on Vortex was mind-boggling this year and the heavy air from all the rain made the lasers extra cool at times. While I’ve enjoyed what Temple Deco have done in previous years, Mushuman’s canopy art and Nox Felix on the stage elevated it even further by using such gorgeous detail and the color was spectacular, so while stages like Gravity and Spacetime come to life best at night when you can see the colors and lights moving, Vortex was magic, day or night.

Regarding the overall festival, I did notice that the food options seemed more limited this year than in the past couple of years. We had good burgers from Penalty, some spring rolls from the generic questionable Asian place, and I tried the Japanese okonamiyaki booth’s takoyaki (which, let’s be clear, had no tako [octopus] in it, but was more like Finnish fusion takoyaki, with reindeer, cheese, salmon, and tofu for fillings; admittedly, I didn’t really taste the fillings at all, so either they got my order wrong or the sauces masked the entirety of the flavors within, because normally I can easily tell the difference between poro and lohi). The hot dog stand was quite decent and we ate there twice, but we were sad that the Tibetan (I think) place that was selling momos last year was gone, as it had been a favorite place to stop for lighter snacks. Ultimately, there were good meals in bigger sizes, but we might have wanted more lighter options for smaller meals; the spring rolls were good but quite greasy and I didn’t think I saw a lot of vegan options, which was odd for a what is essentially a hippy festival. Perhaps they can convince Levant to come next year with their falafel rolls?

Regarding the general services, I already said my piece about the water and toilets, so I don’t have any other general complaints, though the rain did make quite a mess of the place and I thought it could have been useful to bring in some sawdust for some of the paths, particularly surrounding Vortex; I think Dark River Festival does this when the rain is out of control and I am always very comfortable at that festival, rain or shine, as it never turns into an unholy mud pit. The mud was pretty treacherous this year and I was struggling between having to wear my rather uncomfortable rain boots just so the mud didn’t get inside my shoes, versus going full barefoot and wading through shin-deep mud.

On Sunday, we decided to leave the festival with the night lights and life as the freshest of memories and skipped our final walk through the festival area. Though we did miss the final dance at Vortex, it’s also nice to get out of there before the crowds sober up and get moving. I came home to a warm sauna and was glad to have a day to kick back and relax after the festival, though I admit that the reason this report was so slow is because I am still feeling like I’ve been hit by a train physically, despite my soul feeling completely recharged.

So, what is it that’s so special about Kosmos then? Well, first of all, the people: on Thursday when I was doing most of my daytime photo-taking, I forgot to take my cards out of my phone case and lost two bank cards, my Kela card, my S card, and two IDs. I simply went over to the Info desk and there they were, waiting for me. No one had used my cards or robbed me blind, they simply found my lost items and returned them. Where else in the world do you find such genuine kindness and respect? Don’t get me wrong, you do have people who come just to get ripped and party as hard as they can, but in a world that feels like it’s constantly burning due to greed, capitalism, and general shady and selfish behavior, Kosmos is perhaps the only place on Earth that feels like a magical haven where I personally feel like being a part of the collective mass of humans is a good thing. For example, the Vortex stage in particular becomes a grand mush of people in the zone, dancing, and as someone who hates crowds in general, it speaks volumes that I feel comfortable melting into that grand mush and losing myself to it. People come to have fun, enjoy art, explore what different cultures have to offer, relax, reconnect, and so much more. Even though it has been taking me days (arguably longer than the festival itself) to re-center and physically recover (probably more reflective of my physical condition than anything relating to the festival), I feel it has been completely worth it. Last year, I experienced a deep moment of joy and connection while watching the Circus. This year, I felt something similar: a profound inspiration to reconnect with yoga and my body after watching the performers in the aerial silks and dancing with fire.

Then there’s the art, atmosphere, and music. The fact that, unlike most festivals, this one goes day and night, is a very different experience from what you get at your usual festival that’s over at 1.00 in the morning at the latest. There’s no big crowds or rushes to beat, you can simply be where you want to be, enjoy what you want to enjoy, and nobody gives you any trouble. The heart and soul of Kosmos is that we take care of one another, because if we don’t, the festival can’t happen. It’s such a safe space, full of the utmost beauty. You can connect to art and music, or to nature, whatever you feel like. It’s a rather transcendental place.

So, Kosmos Festival is a place to party, yes, but it’s also a place to explore, appreciate, and connect. I love that they don’t seem to increase the number of tickets they sell, in order to keep it the way it is. I can only hope that I’ll have the strength and stamina to keep coming back as long as I can! This is one festival that you simply don’t want to miss.