The Ortigueira Festival opens the 2023 Runas Contest for upcoming groups

The initiative, destined to promote new values of Celtic music, reaches its 24th edition in a year in which, for the second consecutive time, the Ortigueira Festival will be held for eight days, from July 9th to 16th. 

The Ortigueira City Council will focus one more year on social networks efforts to encourage contact with the followers of the event worldwide. The contest will be open to those bands whose repertory includes traditional music from Celtic countries, in tune with the usual music programmed at the Festival, whatever their country of origin.

The participation material can be sent until 23:59h on Friday, April 28th, and the judging process will consist of two phases. In the first phase a technical committee named by the Ortigueira City Council will make a selection of a maximum of ten works from among those received that meet all the requirements. The second phase will start on Friday, May 5th, and the works of the selected groups can be voted and listened on the Festival’s website. This second phase will end on Friday, May 19th at 14:00h, resulting in the selection of the finalists.

The finalists will be determined by a five-vote system. One vote will be chosen by people voting on the Festival website, and the other four votes will come from a specialized jury selected by the City Council.

The three finalist groups will be announced on the Festival’s website and social networks on Wednesday, May 24th, Thursday, May 25th, and Friday, May 26th. The finalists will perform at the Festival Internacional do Mundo Celta de Ortigueira 2023, each of them receiving a payment of up to 1.500 euros for the performance. The winner will be hired to perform at the 2024 edition and will receive a payment of up to 3.000 euros for the performance. The jury may not propose any group if it considers that this year they do not meet the minimum artistic and musical quality standards.

The finalists will be able to share the experience of performing in Ortigueira with the winners of the 2020 (the Scottish Holiday Club), 2021 (the Galicians Trikitrí) and 2022 (the Madrid-based JDC) editions, and with groups as important as Algaire, Anxo Lorenzo e Eoghan Neff, David Bellas, Escola de Gaitas de Ortigueira, Felpeyu, Fetén Fetén con P. Pascual, Four Men and a Dog, Le Vent du Nord, Rubén Díaz, Rura, SonDeSeu, Startijenn, Talisk, Trikitrí, Xabier Díaz, Xisco Feijoó, Xurxo Fernandes and many more.

Download the requirements in Galician, Spanish and English at www.festivaldeortigueira.com/runas/