From July 3-6, the Tallinn Song Festival Grounds and Kalev Stadium will once again be filled with tens of thousands of performers and spectators, united in song, movement and a festive spirit. Performers and participants are working daily, step by step, to prepare for the big event and ensure that everything goes off without a hitch this summer.

Heli Jürgenson, artistic director of this year's Song Festival, says that reaching the 100-day mark has already sparked some nervous excitement.

"The pace is picking up each day, and the festival is only getting closer," Jürgenson said. "We have to think very carefully about how the production of the two Song Festival concerts will look at the Song Festival Grounds."

Pre-festival rehearsals for singers, dancers and musicians alike are already underway, and will continue throughout the spring. These rehearsals will be a deciding factor in which groups will be selected to perform in this year's Song and Dance Festival.

Dance Festival instructors, meanwhile, are also busy preparing for their vital role. Seminars are coming up on April 27 and May 10 about the Dance Festival's drill — the distinctive designs, patterns and movement the dancers bring to the stadium grounds as they perform — where participants will be briefed on this year's drill, how to read it and how groups of dancers will be placed.

"The drill seminar is an important intermediate stage for the Dance Festival, ensuring that the work at various rehearsal grounds during the festival week can run smoothly and the designs can begin to take shape," explained dance coordinator Agne Kurrikoff-Herman.

Behind the scenes, an entire organizing team is also working hard to ensure that all of the Song and Dance Festival's major events go smoothly.

"For example, we have a traffic team preparing for road closures, a waste management team taking care of environmental matters and so on," highlighted Estonian Song and Dance Festival Foundation director Margus Toomla.

"Each team is preparing their part, but there are also touchpoints between the teams, and cooperation between them is essential," he noted.

The foundation director added that while there is still much to be done and now less than 100 days to go, things are progressing on schedule.

Festival flame to be lit June 15

On June 15, the ceremonial Song and Dance Festival flame will be lit in Tartu, where the first ever Estonian Song Festival took place in July 1869.

The ceremonial flame will travel through every county in Estonia before making its way to the Tallinn Song Festival Grounds.

Among its stops will be Narva, where the Estonian World Festival, or ESTO, will host its concert ESTO SING at Narva Castle on Sunday, June 29.

That Sunday will also mark the start of the long-awaited festival week in Tallinn, beginning with Dance Festival rehearsals at various locations around the capital. Final rehearsals for the Song Festival will start on Thursday, July 3, the same day festival folk musicians arrive in town for their own full rehearsal.

The XXVIII Song and XXI Dance Festival, titled "Iseoma" ("Kinship"), will be held in Tallinn on July 3-6, 2025.

The XXI Dance Festival will include three performances at Kalev Stadium on July 3 and 4, and folk musicians will give a free concert at Tallinn's Freedom Square on Friday, July 4.

The Song and Dance Festival Parade and opening concert of the XXVIII Song Festival will take place on Saturday, July 5, with the main concert to follow on Sunday, July 6.

Time-honored tradition

Estonia's first Song Festival was held in Tartu in 1869. The first Dance Festival was held in 1934, and the first Youth Song and Dance Festival took place in 1962.

Estonia's all-ages and youth festivals have each typically taken place every five years, on a staggered schedule.

In November 2003, UNESCO added Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania's song and dance festival tradition to its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

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