YOUROPE’s Event Safety (YES) Group is known for their annual training event at ESNS and efforts to transfer knowledge on many topics of event safety and security beyond this seminar. In 2024, their biggest contribution to sharing their expertise was the recently published “3F Safety Report”. It provides an in-depth analysis of the challenges and opportunities faced by the festival industry in the post-pandemic world, specifically from 2022 to 2024.

The report highlights how the return of festivals brought excitement, but also introduced significant operational challenges such as staff shortages, inexperienced teams, and extreme weather conditions, as well as crowd management issues.

Festivals have had to adapt to rising safety concerns, including weather-related risks, the behavior of a new generation of festival-goers, and evolving threats like terrorism.

In addition to the findings and conclusions from three consecutive annual surveys of the leading festival safety experts in Europe, the report focuses on three key areas:

• weather-related threats: weather has become increasingly unpredictable, requiring festivals to adopt proactive risk management strategies to ensure safety.
• the importance of thorough documentation: detailed documentation is necessary for both pre-event planning and real-time incident management, which is essential for operational efficiency and legal accountability.
• how festivals are navigating new risks: e.g., terrorism, a rise in cyberattacks, certain activities related to political activism.

Together, these factors highlight the need for innovative safety measures and a more resilient approach to festival management in the evolving landscape of live events.

The 3F safety report is part of YOUROPE’s three-year project “Future-Fit Festivals” (3F) co-funded by the European Union.