Gem Fest: Georgia gears up for massive electronic music festival

Georgia’s coastal town Anaklia is preparing to host Gem Fest - one of the most large-scale Georgian music festivals.

GEM Fest will host a warm up day tomorrow before the grand opening on July 31 with world-famous Dutch DJ Armin Van Buuren.

The festival will continue until August 7 with a loaded line-up from leading international and local artists.

"GEM Fest was conceived as an international, multi-platform festival to celebrate the most illustrious, the brightest, and the best in youth culture, dance music, and stagecraft today,” said the event organisers.

"The supernovas and bright young stars of the global electronic scene, the most dazzling developments in modern art, and the most passionate trailblazers and trendsetters; choreographers, art directors, designers, photographers, cinematographers, DJs, video artists and even athletes — we love anything that makes you turn your head and say, ‘Brilliant!’” they said.

Preparatory works of Gem Fest are almost finished. Photo by Gem Fest

The event will feature five stages to host many renowned artists, such as Tale of Us, Booka Shade, Radio Slave, Petre Inspirescu, David August, Ellen Allien, Whomadewho and many more.

In addition, GEM Fest will widely feature local DJs and producers – Kancheli, Greenbeam & Leon, Nakashidze, Nikakoi & Natalie Beridze, Gio Shengelia, Gacha and more.

Besides electronic music, the festival will also present performances of several local bands; Loudspeakers, Nino Katamadze with Nikoloz Rachveli, Bakur Burduli and more.

One day before the warm up day organisers announced every person living in Georgia’s breakaway Abkhazia region would be able to attend the festival for free.

Anaklia is located extremely close to the Administrative Boundary Line (ABL) separating Abkhazia with the rest of Georgia.

The event organisers said many Abkhazians had already expressed their interest in the festival and were willing to attend the event.

Watch a promo video for the festival below: