A guide to Electric Castle Festival in Romania
Electric Castle festival is held at Banffy Castle near Cluj-Napoca in Transylvania, Romania, every July. For a relatively small music festival it brings in some big acts – in 2025, Justin Timberlake, Queens of the Stone Age, Justice, and Shaggy performed. And while the vibe was a little different from your average UK music festival, we had an amazing weekend.
Here’s everything you need to know about Electric Castle festival, how to get there, where to stay, and what to bring with you.
How to get to Electric Castle
We flew from Luton directly to Cluj-Napoca airport, where we got a taxi to the official festival drop-off point (a 10-15 minute walk from the gates). There are also shuttle buses run by the festival at various intervals throughout the day, and you can also catch shuttle buses from a few malls in Cluj-Napoca. But we found the taxi to be easier and more efficient, and it cost roughly the same amount.
Depending on where you’re flying from, it may be cheaper or easier to fly to Bucharest and connect from there.
Where to stay during the festival
We chose the most basic camping option: a pre-erected tent that’s big enough for two people and comes with a blow-up double mattress and a sheet. The tents are pretty good. There was heavy rain during the weekend and zero leaks… but there is very little space for your bags. One of our friends couldn’t come and we ended up using his empty tent to store our luggage as our own tents were so full.
You do have to pay about €99 for a camping pass and then another €99 for your tent, but unless you can bring your own this is by far the cheapest accommodation option. We’re very used to camping at festivals, so didn’t feel the need to go for anything fancier.
Other accommodation
Other options include bringing your own tent (not easy if you’re flying), choosing one of the various glamping options on-site, or opting for a local hotel or Airbnb. There are shuttles into Cluj-Napoca from the festival every day, but the queues get long after the headline act has finished. It also costs about €30 per day, which adds up on top of the cost of accommodation.
We actually chose to spend our final night (Sunday) at a hotel in Cluj-Napoca so we could shower and wake up fresh for a day of exploring the town the next day. We packed up our things in the morning, took a taxi to the town (about 40 minutes) and then headed back in for mid-afternoon. Then once we were ready to leave we got a taxi back into the town at night. It was a lot of back-and-forth, but worth it.
What to expect at Electric Castle festival
Obviously the main attraction at Electric Castle is the music, which starts on the Thursday and ends on the Sunday night and runs pretty much for 24-hours straight. We were impressed by the line-up and how good the mix of international and local acts were. There’s about six stages and a number of additional bars. And because the festival is small it’s easy to get from one place to the next.
Music at Electric Castle
There’s music all day… Literally. At night, it gets heavier, but during the day there’s a good mix of genres across both outdoor and covered stages. The festival app is good for planning your day and is really easy to use.
It goes without saying that, when it rains, the covered bars and stages fill up. But even through torrential rain the crowd at the main stage had a good vibe. Speaking of the main stage, the set up is amazing and the huge screens mean you can pretty much always see… Just don’t go to the front left unless you’re way in front of the cameras, as the arm of it will block your view.
Electric Castle sponsors
For me, the weirdest thing was that every single element of the festival is sponsored. But where this feels weirdly boujee at a festival like Wilderness, it worked well at Electric Castle. There was a large Lidl store on-site, the showers were run by Dove and had mirrors and toiletries in them, there was free toothpaste given away by Oral-B, there was a laundry service sponsored by Persil… They really make the most of the sponsorships rather than just giving every bar an exclusive (expensive) drink sponsor! We even got a goodie bag with things like toothpaste, snacks, wipes, and other useful bits when we arrived.
Electric Castle rules
You aren’t allowed to bring any of your own alcohol onto the grounds of Electric Castle. Not even into the camping areas. To cross from the camping field into the main festival you have to go through two checkpoints, which means you can’t even buy a pint at the camping bar and take it into the festival.
This applies to everything except water, it turns out, as we were given a free can of soda on our way out of the campsite and then had to throw it away before entering the festival site 2 minutes later!
The exception is that you can buy soft drinks and water at the Lidl within the festival grounds and bring them into the campsite. Just not the other way around.
Food and drink at Electric Castle
There are plenty of places to eat and drink and loads of affordable food options. We ate from the Lidl a lot, and also Lidl’s pop-up canteen which served everything from fries and nuggets to fresh pasta and salads. Other than Lidl, there are a wide range of other vendors selling pretty much what you’d expect: pizza, burgers, curries, Thai, and other festival favourites.
Why Electric Castle is different from other festivals
There are a few things that make Electric Castle different from UK festivals:
The ticket price is affordable (about €170 plus camping)
The grounds are easy to navigate and have a mix of paths and grass
The headline acts are huge considering the size of the festival itself
The grounds are incredible, especially when the castle is lit up at night
The castle doubles as a craft market and vintage shop that you can explore during the day
The music runs for 24 hours
Despite being a Romanian festival, you can easily get by with just English
Less positive (but not bad!) things that set Electric Castle apart:
Not being able to bring your own alcohol means that it can get expensive to drink a lot. The result of this was that it’s the most sober festival I’ve ever done!
The checkpoints between camping and entry are annoying (but I get it)
You can only pay for things on a pre-paid wristband, so you need to keep an eye on it and keep it topped up to avoid slowing things down at the bar.
If there’s money left on your wristband you have to apply to get it sent back to you.
If there aren’t acts on that you’re interested in, there’s not loads to do… But we used this time to explore the village and some of the local pubs!
The rainy legend… it’s a thing! It will rain at least once. For us, it was torrential for a full day. But the rest of the weekend was glorious.
What to pack for Electric Castle
Packing for Electric Castle is tricky if you’re flying, because you’re limited by luggage allowances. We flew with Wizz, who charge about £50 each way for large bags which is a significant amount to add to the price of getting to EC in the first place! So it’s important to be smart. We shared a large bag between two people and then made the most of the (stingy!) hand luggage allowances, and I was pretty pleased with how it went!
These are the essentials that I packed for Electric Castle festival in Romania.
Essentials:
Everyone has a different idea of what’s essential, but I err on the lighter side of things. Especially since we were staying in tents and I didn’t want to risk anything getting stolen (though there are lock-ups on-site).
This is what I brought with me to Electric Castle:
Your passport
Charging packs and cables
A water bottle (but no metal or plastic are allowed!)
A travel pillow
A blanket/sleeping bag
A towel
A bag to use in the day
An extra tote bag
Your normal toiletries + SPF (no need to bring shower gel, it’s provided!)
Clothing and accessories:
Basically, you need one of everything per day. If it’s hot, you’ll be sweating so you won’t want to repeat-wear a top. If it’s wet, then obviously you won’t want to rewear your soggy things. But since it’s July in Europe, it’s warm even if there’s rain. So you’ll only really need layers for the night time. Pack these lightly, and aim to pack light, thin fabrics (i.e. avoid denim!) for your daytime outfits. And of course, if you’re extending your stay in Romania you’ll want to bring extra clothes for however long you’re there.
This is the clothing I packed for Electric Castle.
One t-shirt or vest top per day
Two long-sleeved tops (it can get chilly at night)
One or two jumpers (or a light jacket)
A dress
A waterproof
Three pairs of shorts
Two pairs of trousers (you could bring more but it was 30ºc even when raining during our trip)
One pair of boots
One pair of trainers
One pair of flipflops (I left the Birkenstocks at home and opted for slim, easy-to-pack sandals)
A bikini for the showers (although you don’t really need one)
Sunglasses
A sun hat
Cosy socks and pyjamas for camping
Tips for making the most of your Electric Castle experience
Electric Castle is an easy festival to navigate. The only complicated part is topping up your wristband and even that is pretty easy. You can find basically everything you need to know on the website FAQs. But these are my top tips:
Get your drinks from Lidl rather than the bars, where possible. It’s so much cheaper.
Use any spare time to explore the village, including the pop-up pubs people make in their gardens.
Don’t stress about getting to a stage early, you’ll never have trouble getting a good spot.
If you’re camping, the way in and out of the festival is fairly chill so there’s no peak time to avoid, except directly after the headliner.
Make the most of the freebies offered by sponsors.
For the shortest shower queues, go when you get in at night rather than in the morning.
To save money, stay on-site or in the village rather than in Cluj
Boujee recommendation: get a nice hotel on the last night so you wake up feeling the best you’ve ever felt on the day after a festival. I can highly recommend Courtyard by Marriott Cluj-Napoca Downtown which was amazing.