Floating Castle 2026

The Twenty-First Orchestra

From 12 to 25 July 2026, the Etno Histeria World Orchestra will gather for the twenty-first time at Cat's Hill (Mačji hrib) in Slovenian Istria. This year's edition brings together 75 outstanding musicians from 21 countries: Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czechia, Chile, Estonia, Finland, France, Croatia, India, Ireland, Italy, Hungary, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Tunisia and Turkey.

Each participant brings their own musical language, experience and traditions, which meet, intertwine and are reinvented through collective creation. The map of musical influences stretches from Northern, Southern, Eastern and Western Europe to the Balkans, the Mediterranean, North Africa, India, and both North and South America.

An Orchestra Without Sheet Music

The project has been running continuously since 2003. Every year, a completely new group of musicians comes together to explore the limits of collective creativity—both during rehearsals and on stage. A complex two-hour programme of world music traditions is created in just five days, entirely without sheet music, relying exclusively on listening and oral transmission. Musicians teach one another melodies, rhythms and songs, while the creative process is enriched by spontaneous late-night jam sessions, dance evenings and informal performances.

Learning and adaptation continue throughout the tour itself, as the musicians remain in constant dialogue, welcoming guest artists and embracing unexpected situations. Alongside eight official concerts, the orchestra performs numerous spontaneous street and guerrilla interventions each year—on boats, rafts, hay wagons, public squares and other unconventional locations.

At the end of each tour, the orchestra disbands, only to be reborn the following year with a completely new line-up, repertoire and artistic direction.

Social Engagement – 9 Worlds

Etno Histeria has always been more than music; it is also a platform for social engagement. Alongside performances at established venues, the orchestra actively collaborates with local communities, creates artistic interventions and addresses pressing social issues through both artistic expression and personal encounters.

In addition to performances on hay wagons, concerts inside a prison and musical encounters with local communities along the Kolpa River, this year's tour will include concerts in solidarity with Gaza, culminating in a major intervention in the centre of Ljubljana entitled "9 Worlds."

The project is an interdisciplinary spectacle on the Ljubljanica River, combining a concert with a site-specific street performance. The floating procession will travel from Dragon Bridge to Trnovo Landing, stopping beneath bridges, alongside balconies and riverbanks, where the orchestra will be joined by outstanding guest artists: soprano Irena Preda, the Kikiwritings collective, dancers Kaja Lin, Manca Pavli, Ahmad Kullab and the Ursus Dancers, circus artists Danijela Zajc and Anja Herc, puppeteer Alex Barti, and many other collaborators.

The river procession will culminate in a large open-air concert beneath the willow trees at Trnovo Landing, accompanied by visual projections featuring a live connection with Gaza.

Etno Histeria thus remains an international space for encounters, artistic growth and long-term collaboration. The result is not merely a concert programme, but a temporary international community that explores, through music, new possibilities for cooperation, coexistence and the creation of a shared language beyond the boundaries of nations, cultures and musical genres. Through listening, collective creation and open dialogue, the orchestra continues to demonstrate that music can be a powerful space for solidarity, social change and critical reflection on the world we live in.