On Thursday, 8 October, at its first meeting of the autumn session, the Riga City Council’s Culture Committee reviewed the 825th anniversary celebrations of Riga, the results achieved and the future development of the ‘Riga Summer’ cultural programme.
The celebrations marking Riga’s 825th anniversary have become one of the year’s most ambitious cultural events in the capital, demonstrating that Riga is capable of creating internationally appealing, artistically diverse and contemporary city celebrations. A total of 387,000 people attended the anniversary celebrations, whilst the festival’s website, rigasvasara.lv, attracted 314,000 visitors, and the festival app was downloaded 12,000 times.
In total, 53 events took place as part of the ‘Riga Summer’ programme between 1 and 30 August. The number of events has increased by eleven compared with last year. The most popular events were Riga’s birthday celebrations at 11 November Embankment, entitled ‘Open Riga! Code: 825’, which attracted 60,000 visitors; the Red Bull Showrun, with 55,000 visitors; Krastu mači (Banks Match), with 45,000 visitors; and the Left Bank Festival, with 30,000 visitors.
Since 2023, attendance at ‘Riga Summer’ has grown from 63,000 to 387,000.
This year, the total funding for the ‘Riga Summer’ events amounted to EUR 1.7 million.
Dāvis Stalts, Head of the Culture Committee, emphasises that this year’s success was driven not only by an ambitious programme, but also by a closely coordinated approach to its development. “In my opinion, this year we managed to achieve something far more significant than just well-organised city celebrations. We have succeeded in demonstrating that Riga is capable of being a creatively bold, ambitious and united city. The key to this success was not just the budget, organisational experience or professional event production. It was the attitude of the people involved – that special inner drive, the desire to impress, to demonstrate their creative capabilities and to achieve something they could truly be proud of. We worked shoulder to shoulder in the celebrations management working group. Not each within their own institutional boundaries, but as a single team with a shared goal. And this time, it really did work. I am pleased that we have managed to reach a shared vision amongst the local government’s cultural event organisers, various departments, tourism and marketing professionals, and independent producers. We will not only preserve this model of cooperation, but also continue to develop it in the future,” says Dāvis Stalts.
A bold idea that hit the mark
The guiding theme of Riga’s 825th anniversary celebrations, ‘Open Riga! Code: 825’, became the unifying concept for the diverse programme of events, inviting Riga’s residents and visitors to rediscover the capital’s history, neighbourhoods, cultural spaces, contemporary creative expressions and future opportunities.
Director Juris Jonelis played a key role in shaping the artistic vision for the celebrations, bringing a fresh and conceptually different perspective to the scope of the city’s anniversary festivities. Meanwhile, artist Reinis Pētersons created the visual identity of the celebrations, giving the anniversary a vibrant and recognisable image.
“When we jointly came up with the name ‘Open Riga! Code: 825’, it initially seemed like quite a risky leap into the unknown. It was not the usual, traditional slogan for the city’s anniversary. However, we believed in this idea and, in my opinion, we hit the mark,” emphasises Stalts.
Riga celebrated not only in the city centre, but throughout the city
The celebrations marking Riga’s 825th anniversary were organised as an extensive cultural programme spanning the entire month of August, combining major events in the city centre with neighbourhood festivals, musical parks, contemporary art initiatives, and sporting and gastronomic events.
The anniversary month kicked off with the Left Bank Festival in Uzvaras Park, whilst the musical parks programme brought the Dzegužkalns Open-air Stage, Vērmanes Garden and Ziemeļblāzmas Park to life.
An electronic music concert in Town Hall Square added a special atmosphere to the celebrations, bringing together music, light and a contemporary urban experience. The open-air festival restaurant ‘Open a Window onto Riga!’, set up in Opera Square, brought together gastronomy, music and Riga’s cultural heritage, offering an unconventional way to celebrate Riga’s birthday.
The highlight of the celebrations was the programme on 15 August at 11. novembra krastmala, where performances by Latvian musicians of different generations came together to form the concert narrative entitled ‘My Score: Riga’. It brought together popular music, classical music, choral singing and contemporary audiovisual direction in one place. The diversity of the celebrations was further enriched by the international contemporary circus and street art festival ‘Re Rīga!’, street music and mime festivals, the art performance ‘Horses Enter the City’, the Banks Match (‘Krastu mačs’), the ‘Red Bull Showrun’ car and motorsport show, as well as contemporary urban cultural events, including the ‘ROW Baltics’ street art festival in Sarkandaugava. The culmination of the birthday month was the revival of traditions in the very heart of Old Riga during the ‘Īrgas’ festival, where a new centre for traditional culture and crafts was unveiled.
The diversity of this programme enabled the celebrations to appeal to a wide range of audiences and to showcase Riga as a vibrant, multi-faceted European capital.
The greatest value of the celebrations – the people who made them happen
The Head of the Culture Administration of the Riga City Council’s Education, Culture and Sports Department (ECSD) expresses her gratitude to all the artists, directors, producers, the local government’s cultural staff, technical teams, security and public order personnel, as well as the local government’s departments, administrations and services involved in the preparation and running of these grand celebrations.
“I would like to say a huge thank you to everyone who made these celebrations possible. To the artists who filled the city with content and emotion. To the technical staff, who often go unnoticed, but without whose professionalism none of our plans would be possible. To the security services, producers, cultural centre teams, local government administrations and departments – to everyone who worked with genuine passion in their eyes. For me, these celebrations reaffirmed once again that Riga’s greatest creative resource is its people. If you trust them, give them the opportunity to take on responsibility and allow them to bring bold ideas to life, the result can be truly outstanding,” says Baiba Šmite, Head of the Culture Administration at the Riga City Council’s Education, Culture and Sports Department.
The local government and independent producers – one team
In reviewing the anniversary celebrations, the Culture Committee placed particular emphasis on the professional cooperation between all parties involved. Both events organised by private producers and those held by cultural centres and associations overseen by the ECSD Culture Administration demonstrated a high standard of artistic and organisational quality.
The Riga Investment and Tourism Agency (RITA) made a particular contribution during this anniversary year, playing a very active role in shaping the overall concept of the celebrations, not only by carrying out an extensive international marketing campaign, but also by creatively developing the city’s gastronomic offering. The ‘Riga Taste Festival’ and the anniversary open-air restaurant served as an example of how cultural events can be combined with the city’s hospitality sector and the promotion of its international profile.
150 volunteers – a solid foundation for a new city tradition
The organisers of the celebrations would like to extend their special thanks to the 150 volunteers who helped to make the anniversary celebrations a success. This experience must not remain merely a success story for a single anniversary year. Riga should develop a long-term volunteering programme that would enable the city’s residents, particularly young people, to get regularly involved in organising significant cultural and community events.