… and the team.
There are kite festivals. And then there is this kilometers long sandy beach chock-full of people, and the sky above it chock-full with incredible flying sculptures of all sizes, colours and shapes.

Kilometers, you ask? Yes. We were stationed at one end of the kite field, and we wanted to meet Luca and his contradas of Urbino, who were all the way at the other end.
It took us an hour to walk there.

Kites of all sizes, you ask? Yes. There were those delicate masterpieces of Daniela that our clumsy kiter didn’t even see and barely managed to avoid trampling them – measured in centimeters, flying on spiderweb-thin lines.

And there was this blue whale, 1:1 scale.

Kites of all shapes, you ask? Yes. From classical rokkakus, deltas, eddies, fleds, and doperos to intricate astral gliders, pointer kites, huge parafoils and parasleds, to bears, caterpillars, octopuses, fish, trilobites, aliens, and every crazy thing that can or can’t fly.

Everything was up there. It was the Lido di Jesolo kite & beach festival, 3rd edition.

We were at a couple of kite festivals, we even organized one, but … it’s plainly incredible for a festival to begin from scratch, become huge the very next year, and in another year evolve into an enormous three-day event eclipsing most, if not all kite festivals.

300+ kite flyers from all over the world came for the festival to fly their masterpieces for the crowds.

And the crowds came.

“How many people do you expect to come, Filippo?”
“Eeee …. around, em … five thousand.”

Sure, there were 5.000 people there – by the small part of the enormous, 2 miles long kite field where we were flying. And 5.000 on the other side, and 5.000 behind them, and 5.000 by the sea, and 5.000 in and around the cafes, and 5.000 on the sidewalk, and 5.000 watching the aerobatics show, and 5.000 …

The official number of visitors that enjoyed the festival on Friday and Saturday is 160.000 – and then Sunday drew the biggest crowd. So Filippo and the crew brought some three hundred thousand people to the festival. Yes, that’s a 3 followed by five zeros: 300.000 …

Any amount of sponsorship the town of Jesolo provided, it got it all back the very first day of the festival by the bloody parking tickets alone.
That’s how you do a kite festival!

Three things were behind the incredible aerial show and the hundreds of thousands of mesmerized visitors: expertise, hard work, and total support.

Filippo and his crew – of course he couldn’t do all this alone! – know pretty much everything about kites, kite flyers, and kite festivals. Then they worked their asses off for months, because the devil is in the details. And every step along the way they had full support of the community of Jesolo; the tourism board, the hoteliers and restaurateurs and beachmasters and everyone else – because they know tourism is everything in this seaside town on the Adriatic, and they know how tourism works.

Jesolo wakes up from its winter sleep in late March, and in April the season proper starts. And how better to start the season than with a huge bang, a crowd magnet, an incredible show – a kite festival.
And then you couldn’t have a pizza because every pizzeria had a huge line of waiting hungry people outside.
Every cafe was full.
Every boutique was full.
Every parking spot was taken.

The poor fast food seller on the beach had to run to the supermarket 20 minutes after opening the stall:
“I need hot dogs!”
“Sure, how many?”
“All of them!”
The average Aperol spritz waiting time at the beach bar was half an hour.
The kite shop got their stock cleared out by midday on Friday.

And the crowd got their money and time worth …. for the show was beyond spectacular. The acrobatic teams flying stunt kites and revolution kites . The night flying of kites with LEDs, The kite workshops for kids and adults. The huge inflatable dinosaurs and Smurfs and action heroes. The indomitable Angelo – the best kite MC ever by a margin! – talking his vocal chords off, rallying the crowds and lifting the kites with the power of his voice when the wind died a little.

We had to leave the festival in the early afternoon on Sunday (Mondays are a bitch), and it took us an hour to clear the town – cars were rolling out, cars were rolling in … the Mayor of Jesolo is still apologising for the mother of all road clusterfucks that happened when the festival was over and 100.000 people wanted to go home.

“Can we do something like that here, in Slovenia?”
“No. But we will definitely try!”

It’s not just that our organizing skills are far below those of Filippo and the Jesolo festival team. It’s the attitude of the inept tourism executives and pompous local lords: it’s either “No, that can’t be done” (in the typical passive voice), or “What’s in it for me?” greed. Here it’s much easier to make a living writing pointless and exorbitant tourism strategies (“We must focus on five stars experiential boutique high-end adventurous blahblahblah”) than work in real tourism. Wish they would come to Jesolo and see how it’s done.



But anyway, the 3rd Jesolo Beach & Kite Festival was a fantastic experience. Unforgettable three days of kite flying, meeting old friends and making new ones, enjoying the sun and the wind and the incredible aerial show – con il naso all’insù.

Huge thanks to the people of Jesolo and Lido di Jesolo, to Filippo, Nat, Angelo, Veronica, Eleonora, and the whole organizing team – you deserve each and every one of the 81 flying stars! – to the Mayor of Jesolo Cristofer De Zotti, to all who came to watch the festival and made us proud – and of course to all the kiters we’ve met there. Karin and Roger, Bear Knots, Carly and Phil, Luca, Livio and the contradas of Urbino, Denis, Ina and Herman, Daniela and Gerhard, Betty and Thomas, Massimo, Roberto, Giancarlo, Paola and Sandro, Franca, the Holland kite team, the German kite team, the French kite team, the Croatian kite team … everyone. Thank you for the most amazing show imaginable.


















And sorry, Andrea – next time we will make it sure we meet and fly together! 😉

Great to meet you! And for literally giving me the shirt off your back! I’m so excited to have the only Slovenia Kite Team shirt in the USA!
Thanks, Phil – and thanks for the kite! 🙂
Thanks for sharing all the photos, see you soon in ???
Gerhard & Daniela
Thanks, Daniela and Gerhard!
Don’t know yet where exactly, but hopefully soon 😉
A superb report! Thank you!
I hope to see you all again very soon ❤️
Thanks, Barry!
As soon as possible 😉