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40 free Festivals trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Every culture has found a reason to close the streets. Some festivals are sacred: a pilgrimage measured in hundreds of millions of people, a new year spent in total stillness, relics paraded down to the river. Others are gloriously silly, with whole towns hurling fruit at each other or chasing a cheese down a hill. And a few changed music and cinema for good, from the night a singer went electric to the debut that a war cancelled after a single screening. These 40 questions travel across world, religious, music, food and film festivals: ice and snow carnivals in the far north, sun and harvest rites in the south, the great dance and rock gatherings of Europe and the Americas, and the juries and audience votes that decide which films get talked about. Every answer comes with a one-line explanation that adds something you did not know. Play it solo to see how far your passport knowledge stretches, or run it as a round at a quiz night and read the explanations aloud.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01At the Wodaabe people's Gerewol in Niger, who judges the line of painted, eye-rolling young men?
Marriageable women
Marriageable women pick the winners of this week-long courtship contest, where the male beauty ideal prizes tallness, white eyes and white teeth.
Q 02Cannes's first film festival opened on 31 August 1939 and was halted a day later because of what?
Germany's invasion of Poland
Germany's invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 stopped the festival after a single gala screening of The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Q 03At which 1967 festival, a template for Woodstock, did Jimi Hendrix set his guitar alight on stage?
Monterey Pop
Monterey Pop saw Hendrix close 'Wild Thing' by burning his guitar, then smashing it seven times and throwing the remains into the crowd.
Q 04Which Deep Purple song recalls the Montreux Jazz Festival's casino burning down at a Zappa gig?
Smoke on the Water
Smoke on the Water chronicles the December 1971 blaze; Deep Purple had come to Montreux to record there and had to scout the town for another venue.
Q 05Which New Mexico city fills its October dawns with mass ascensions of 500-plus hot-air balloons?
Albuquerque
Albuquerque's Balloon Fiesta is the largest in the world and is billed as the most photographed annual event anywhere; it began in 1972 with just 13 balloons.
Q 06Ganesh Chaturthi's ten days end with the elephant-headed god's clay idols paraded off to what fate?
Immersion
Immersion, the visarjan, sends the god home via a river or the sea; in Mumbai alone around 150,000 idols are immersed every year.
Q 07Which cheese is chased down Cooper's Hill near Brockworth in a race that injures runners most years?
Double Gloucester
A 3–4 kg wheel of Double Gloucester gets a one-second head start and reaches speeds fast enough to knock over spectators on the steep, uneven slope.
Q 08Which actor was the main founder of the institute that runs the Sundance Film Festival?
Robert Redford
Robert Redford, who lived in the area, built the Sundance Institute that now runs the largest independent film festival in the United States.
Q 09Which film festival did Robert De Niro co-found in 2002 to revive Lower Manhattan after 9/11?
Tribeca
Tribeca was launched by De Niro and two partners after the World Trade Center attacks drained life from the neighbourhood.
Q 10Which prize goes to the best film at the world's oldest film festival, founded in Venice in 1932?
Golden Lion
The Golden Lion crowns a festival that Giuseppe Volpi founded in August 1932 and that still ranks among cinema's 'Big Five'.
Q 11Lollapalooza was conceived in 1991 by singer Perry Farrell as a farewell tour for which band?
Jane's Addiction
Jane's Addiction's send-off grew into a touring alt-rock circus and is now a multi-day fixture in Chicago's Grant Park.
Q 12Bob Dylan was booed by some fans in 1965 when he plugged in an electric band at which festival?
Newport Folk
Newport Folk, in Rhode Island, had cheered Dylan's solo sets in 1963 and 1964; on 25 July 1965 he returned backed by members of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band.
Q 13South by Southwest, where Twitter first found buzz in 2007, fills which Texas city each March?
Austin
Q 21Which composer's operas alone fill the Bayreuth Festival, in a theatre he supervised building?
Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner personally oversaw the design and construction of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, and the wait for tickets can run five to ten years or more.
Q 22Which composer born in Salzburg is the focus of its summer festival, opened in 1920 with Jedermann?
Mozart
Mozart was born in the city, and his operas anchor the five-week festival that Max Reinhardt inaugurated on 22 August 1920 with Hofmannsthal's Jedermann on the cathedral steps.
Q 23Yi Peng, held in northern Thailand alongside Loy Krathong, fills the night sky with swarms of what?
Paper lanterns
Austin has hosted SXSW since 1987, and the 2007 Interactive strand is remembered as the moment Twitter caught on.
Q 14Bonnaroo, the June festival held on a 700-acre farm in Manchester, is in which US state?
Tennessee
Tennessee's Bonnaroo has run on what is now Great Stage Park since 2002, typically starting on the second Thursday in June.
Q 15Ultra, the dance festival named after a Depeche Mode album, grew worldwide from which Florida city?
Miami
Miami's Ultra was founded in 1999 by Russell Faibisch and Alex Omes, and its Ultra Worldwide offshoots now run far beyond Florida.
Q 16Tomorrowland, which draws 400,000 dance fans a year to the town of Boom, is in which country?
Belgium
Belgium's Tomorrowland held its first edition in 2005 in Boom, in the province of Antwerp, and has grown into one of the world's biggest dance festivals.
Q 17The first Fuji Rock Festival, held at the foot of Mount Fuji in 1997, lost its second day to what?
A typhoon
A typhoon struck day one, so organisers cancelled day two, which turned out sunny; the festival has lived at Naeba Ski Resort in Niigata since 1999.
Q 18Which Japanese city's Snow Festival began in 1950 with six statues built by high-school students?
Sapporo
Sapporo's festival grew from those six statues in Odori Park into a seven-day event that drew about two million visitors in 2007.
Q 19Vesak, marking the Buddha's birth, enlightenment and death on one day, follows which lunar phase?
Full moon
The full moon of the lunar month of Vesakha fixes the date, so Vesak drifts between the late-spring months from one year to the next.
Q 20Sweden's Midsummer, a family celebration of the brightest days, centres on dancing around what?
A maypole
A maypole in Sweden is called a midsommarstång, a 'midsummer pole', because it goes up for Midsummer rather than in May.
Paper lanterns called khom loi are released by the thousand over Chiang Mai, a Lan Na tradition that runs at the same time as the national Loy Krathong.
Q 24Which Japanese city's Gion Matsuri, born of a ninth-century plague, parades tall floats in July?
Kyoto
Kyoto's Gion Matsuri dates to 869, when Emperor Seiwa ordered prayers against a plague, and its Yamaboko float processions run on 17 and 24 July.
Q 25Kumbh Mela, the pilgrimage that drew 660 million people in 2025, rotates among how many cities?
Four
Four cities share the Kumbh Mela: Prayagraj, Haridwar, Nashik and Ujjain, and the gathering at Prayagraj is counted as the largest on Earth.
Q 26Onam, with its snake-boat races and flower carpets, is the harvest festival of which Indian state?
Kerala
Kerala's Onam welcomes the mythical king Mahabali home for an annual visit, after Vamana banished him to the netherworld.
Q 27The National Eisteddfod of Wales awards its top prizes, the Chair and the Crown, for which art?
Poetry
Poetry takes both prizes: the Chair goes to an awdl in strict metre and the Crown to a pryddest in free verse, all of it in Welsh.
Q 28Which film festival's audience-voted People's Choice Award has become a bellwether for the Oscars?
Toronto
Toronto's festival starts the Thursday after Labour Day and runs eleven days, and its audience-voted winners have often gone on to Best Picture glory.
Q 29Which Nordic country's Roskilde Festival has been run by a non-profit foundation since 1972?
Denmark
Denmark's Roskilde was created in 1971 by two high-school students and a promoter, and the Roskilde Foundation has run it for music, culture and humanism ever since.
Q 30Alba's autumn fair in Piedmont, where buyers pay thousands of dollars a kilo, sells which delicacy?
Truffles
Truffles from around Alba, the prized white kind, sold for $2,200 to $4,800 per kilogram in 2001, and the fair peaks in October and November.