BUDAPEST (AFP) — British heavy metal band Iron Maiden are set on Tuesday to open Budapest's 16th Sziget festival, an annual rock, pop and world music extravaganza that takes place on a small island in the Danube.
Iron Maiden are billed as the headline act for the festival's "Zero Day" starting at 9:30 pm (1930 GMT), with the festival proper kicking off on Wednesday and running until Sunday.
Among the other top acts appearing are The Kooks, Sex Pistols, R.E.M., Jamiroquai, Alanis Morrissette and MGMT.
World music acts include father of Afro-disco Mory Kante, ethno-techno singer Natacha Atlas and the Transglobal Underground, Armenian accordeon player David Yengibarian as well as Sarajevo-born musician Goran Bregovic's Wedding and Funeral Band.
In all, there will be 600 concerts on 30 different stages throughout the week.
Around 400,000 tickets are on sale and organisers predict it will be a sell-out.
Visitors can buy seven-day passes for 150 euros (232 dollars), a weekly pass for 120 euros or daily tickets for 32 euros.
More than 28,000 weekly passes (with camping permits) have been sold in advance, organisers said, and a further 7,000 tickets have been sold without camping permits.
Obudai island is about one kilometre in length and covers and area of some 120 hectares (296 acres) in the Danube. It can host up to 70,000 people at once.
Apart from the Iron Maiden concert, the highest numbers of visitors are expected on Thursday when Jamiroquai is playing and at the weekend.
The Sziget festival began in 1993 shortly after the collapse of communism and then only attracted a few thousand locals.
But it is drawing an increasing number of foreign visitors each year, especially from France, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Britain and Austria, the spokesman said.
In addition to the musical programme, which ranges from gypsy, electronic and heavy metal to jazz and latin, there will also be theatre, dance and circus performances.
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