SZIGET FESTIVAL
L-R Dutch Barrier Services’ Stanley Jilesen and Sziget’ s Tibor Horváth
minority owners who are suppliers of key infrastructure such as staging, fencing and trackway.
Horváth says that having experienced suppliers invested in the festival is paying dividends:“ It has meant we ' ve been able to reserve a lot of items much earlier than in the past, they are supporting us with exclusivities and providing us with some great discounts.”
Among the key shareholders is BL Crew, which supplied many of the larger stages to Sziget this year.
“ BL Crew have been really helpful,” says Horváth.“ This year we wanted to give the main stage a facelift and they came up with some great solutions.”
Among the key established supplier partnerships that have continued to work with Sziget after the change in ownership is Dutch Barrier Services( DBS).
Headquartered in Emmeloord, The Netherlands, DBS was founded during the pandemic, launched a range of crowd safety barriers and wasted no time building an impressive global client base once the industry reopened for business.
Sziget is just one of many projects during what proved to be a very busy summer for the team at DBS, with it supplying festivals such as France’ s Hellfest( cap. 60,000), Pinkpop( 70,000) in The Netherlands and Denmark’ s Roskilde Festival( 87,000) along with major tours by acts including Benson Boone, Bad Bunny, Harry Styles, Iron Maiden, Shakira, and Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds.
DBS senior account manager Stanley Jilesen has more than a decade of experience working on Sziget, the past four being with DBS. As in previous years, the company provided barriers for the main stage but also upped its involvement this year by providing the barrier system for Revolut, Sziget’ s second largest stage. Jilesen also introduced DBS’ sturdy yet sleek looking DB Fence Panels to Sziget for the first time this year.
“ Sziget presents its own challenges and we’ re always striving to make year-onyear improvements,” says Stanley.“ It’ s been great working with Tibor and his team to design and install a barrier system best suited to their site, artist and audience profile. We’ re always listening to what our clients need, so in 2026 DBS has introduced several new products, including the All-Terrain Barrier and Smart Access Turnstile system, to deliver safer events.
“ Our crew on site have also got to know the Sziget production team. They’ re an experienced team and we work with them to support their schedules and on-site requirements such as changes in configurations to suit the security teams, new stage layouts, or incoming artists’ stage configurations.”
The vast barrier system layout for the main stage is the result of careful planning that involved a series of simulations to ensure that it is highly effective in enabling a large proportion of the audience to be reached swiftly, which is particularly important during the incessant heatwaves experienced this year. It has also been designed to deal with crowd movement and behaviour, with a key consideration being that the festival site has only one bridge linking the island to the riverbank, which can mean higher crowd density to one side of the stage.
“ Sometimes we see the younger audience members arrive later in the day and there can be a build-up on one side of the stage if they don’ t continue to move through the area, but everything has been taken into account with the DBS barrier system design. It works perfectly for us,” says Horváth.
A key element of the barrier system that assists with crowd management is Dutch Barrier’ s interlocked Line Up Gate system that was designed to significantly reduce setup time and provide controlled ingress and egress for areas such as a golden circle.
Taking it another step further, Sziget fitted the main stage barrier system with an integrated lighting system that provides considerable aesthetic and practical advantages.
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