Marking the 50th anniversary of the festival

This year's edition of the Music Biennale Zagreb will be marking the event's 50th anniversary. Apart from hosting one of the largest international festivals of contemporary music in Europe, the Croatian capital will also be this year's venue for World Music Days for a second time.

The 26th Music Biennale Zagreb (MBZ), an international music festival that is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, will take place in the Croatian capital between the 7th and the 17th of April. Of the 400 compositions that applied for this year's edition of the festival, the judges selected 68 that have been divided into 14 categories. In all, the program will present the musical creativity from over 40 countries. Within the framework of this year's Music Biennale Zagreb, the Croatian capital will also be this year's venue for World Music Days for a second time.

Considering that this music event is celebrating its jubilee anniversary, the program contains anthological works by composers who have marked half a century of this biannual festival. Among them are works by the founders of the Music Biennale Zagreb, Milko Kelemen and Ivo Malec, as well as numerous other top class musicians from many different countries, including: Igor Stravinsky, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luciano Berio, Iannis Xenakis, John Cage, Witold Lutoslawski, and Dmitri Shostakovich.

The Music Biennale Zagreb is an international festival of contemporary music that has been held every other year since 1961. Since its beginning it has had international success, attracting the most significant names from the global music scene. It has never had classic festival features but, rather, it was a forum for presenting the contemporary music production from Croatia as well as abroad. Thanks to its reputation, the International Society for Contemporary Music also decided to entrust Zagreb with the hosting of this year's World Music Days once again, for the second time since 2005. This event will be concurrent with this year's jubilee Music Biennale Zagreb. For the 9th time an award will be given to a young composer for the best piece in the festival program, and this year's competition consists of 18 works by authors less than 35 years of age.