The smallest Big Blues Festival in Switzerland

The history of Europe's longest festival

In 2002, the passion for music of Fabio Lafranchi, director of the Vallemaggia tourist office, and the expertise of Hannes Anrig, founder of JazzAscona (then still called Festa New Orleans) laid the foundations for a successful bet: to create a blues festival in Vallemaggia. At the time, Ticino had already a lot of other open-air festivals, even famous ones, but none were held in the valley. The first edition, which included only four evenings, was a success, so the organisers decided to double the number of evenings and increase it to 10 in 2004, during a period of one month. In less than five years, the festival became a point of reference for the summer in Ticino and by the time of its 10th edition was confirmed as the most important Blues event in Ticino. In 2014, in the wettest summer ever, only one evening was affected by rain. Mrs. & Mr. Weather must have particularly loved the festival. In 2018, the Vallemaggia Magic Blues faced a new challenge: it was the first edition for the new Producing Team. 2018 was a record-breaking edition full of great artists, but the 20th edition in 2022 managed to top it with a programme made up entirely of musicians who have already performed at the festival.

The magical villages of the Vallemaggia