Normally I don't post festival reviews despite having been to a few. But my experience at Own Spirit 2026 deserves sharing because I found it disappointing to the extent that I would never go again and I do believe that we as festival goers shouldn't tolerate this level of carelessness. Let's start chronologically.
Me and my four friends arrive with our rental campervan on Wednesday (the first official day of the festival) around 7PM. We reach a checkpoint where a guy explains to us that the road to camper park A has broken down and we need to take another turn. So, off we go - to parking lot D. For those that don't know, there's campervan park A just right next to the festival area, campervan park B a bit further (maybe a 10-15min walk from the festival entrance), camping park C (basically equally far as B) for people camping in tents and parking lot D (farthest, around 25-30min from the entrance) for people in park C to leave there cars. Park D has no infrastructure, no water, no toilets, no showers, just dust. So we arrive there, talk to the next checkpoint guy. He tells us park A and B are full. But we bought a camper van pass?! Yeah, it is what it is, you're gonna stay here. We talked to the first checkpoint guy, tried to befriend him. A friend of ours had a parking space reserved for us in park A, she sent us a photo. We discuss with him for a while and eventually find out that people from the organization did either not show up for work or made an error letting cars into park A and camper park B, which was not supposed to happen because those parks were actually reserved for campervans, leading to these parks being full. So what their plan was, was to get out the cars to make room for campervans. So they tried finding the actual car owners and asked them to move their cars. Therefore, nobody could tell us when we could continue to another park, so we resigned and spent our first night in the infrastructure-free dusty parking lot D. What a great night to start the festival.
For the next morning, we set an alarm to 7AM to get up early to make sure that we could line up early in the queue. We talked again to the first checkpoint guy, who was quite friendly at that time to us, and so we showed him again the picture of the space that was reserved for us in Park A, and eventually were able to convince him to let us through to Park A. Then we continued to the next checkpoint guy, which was maybe 100 meters, who he made us stop again. We explained to him the situation. He just told us, No, no way. So no communication between those checkpoints at all. Really frustrating. After a while of waiting, maybe two hours, there was information that we were let in into the festival grounds. At that point, we were back at the road, which was supposedly closed, going to A, waiting there, hoping we could pass through, at which point a car approached, and the security guy said, No, the road is broken. You can't go through. And then the lady called one of the organizers, and then the organization made the checkpoint guy let her through, which made him really angry because the road was supposedly broke, right? Very interesting handling. And afterwards, after that, the checkpoint guy was also kind of pissed off. But, yeah, another tell about the organization here.
While we were still waiting to be let in, one friend of mine and I went over to the festival grounds by foot, and so we wanted to have a first look, and we decided to charge our cashless bracelets. Since I didn't bring my phone, my friend paid for my top-up and also hers. So after we both topped up 30 euros each, we went to the bar, wanted to get a drink. At what point my friend's bracelet appeared to not be charged, no money on it. So I paid for her. We go back to the cashless top-up booth and explained the situation, and they couldn't help, couldn't do anything. They just asked to top up again. Fast forward to the end of the festival, my friend was charged two times, but only once the money appeared on the bracelet. She took a photo at the booth of a sign explaining how the cashless top-up works, and also with an email address where one could write, hello@ownspiritfestival.com. She tried to write to the organization after the festival and got an email that the email address was not available and went into nowhere. Thank you for nothing, I guess.
While we were still on our way back, our friends could already take the road into the festival, not to Park A, but they were sent to Park B or C. And then we talked to another checkpoint guy on the way, who told us that parking at Park C is not allowed because it's for tents only. And if the police came, they could fine every car parked there. However, Park B appeared to be full. So once our campervan arrived, the guy sent us to C. So we were kind of forced, if we didn't want to stay at parking lot D, to camp at a space which was actually not allowed for camper vans, risking to be fined because the organization was so shit. Then at C, you at least had a few Dixie toilets, no water, no showers. But we thought, okay, at least park B is close and they have water and showers. We set up our camp in C, had really nice neighbors. The view was also not too bad and the way by foot to the festival entrance was around 20-25 minutes. We were kind of far, but it is what it is when you don't arrive super early. So we finally settled in, on the second day around noon.
Then about the festival area. For me, it seemed kind of low effort. There was, compared to other festivals I've been to, rather few art installations. The fence around the festival area looked like a fence from a construction site, not very festival vibe, in my opinion. You didn't get a map or an app or information on the website. There was one info point where you had to take photos with your phone of the lineup, and there was no official map of the festival grounds. You actually had to ask the guys at the info point, which had a map but didn't hand out any. So you had to ask for everything: where are the showers, where can I find this, where can I find that. In my opinion, kind of inefficient and also not very practical. The timetable for the workshops was completely in Spanish, so we didn't ever visit a workshop, since the workshops appeared to be in Spanish. It's not our primary goal when we go to a festival, but when they offer nice workshops, we do make sure to go to some. And this was also very disappointing because Own Spirit being marketed as a kind of spiritual festival and then having it all in Spanish was very disappointing.
The way between the two stages is kind of far. I guess five minutes by foot, and from the second stage where mostly psytechno was played, you had to walk up a hill to go to the main stage. I liked the second stage more because, in my opinion, it had the better sound system and also the video mapping was a bit nicer. The main stage had a kind of eye theme, so there were lots of eyes on the stage where the DJ booth was. You could barely see the DJ in the DJ booth because it was so dark, and those eyes were really weird and I didn't like it at all. It's my personal opinion, of course, but also the video mapping was not spectacular at all, especially in 2026 with possibilities to support creative work with AI, I think that it overall was very poor, and it was definitely the poorest video mapping I've seen in my five years of going to festivals. And the sound system was also not really good at the main stage compared to other festivals. If you were more in the back, the sound wasn't that convincing. If you went further to the front, you had to wear earplugs. What was nice, though, was that they had showers next to both stages, so you could shower during the day. But apart from that it wasn't very convincing. At the bars, people barely spoke English, so when I was asking what they actually had, she could barely understand me, and that was at two occasions. I gave up trying to get explained what they had and just ordered something that I saw, which was kind of a shame because a fresh sparkly drink at that heat was really refreshing at times. Infrastructure, like showers or water points or trash cans weren't super visible. The signs were rather small and you had to look out very well. I think that the festival should always have many trash cans so people don't litter. The showers and the toilets were enough, in my opinion. I never had to queue for long.
Then about the food stalls, there were rather few, and the pricing was rather expensive. Most meals were around 13-15€, which is rather much, I would say, for Spain, for people in euro countries. If you earn in US dollars or Swiss francs, then it might be ok, but this way not really. So we always cooked in our camper van, had breakfast and dinner there. But if it was less expensive, I might have gotten something there as well, but I just found the pricing unreasonable. Another thing that bothered me was that at the bar, you would always get your drink in a reusable plastic cup, which you had to pay for, 1€, and I thought that you would have a deposit on those. Nobody told me, by the way. They just hand it out to you and charge more. I collected mine, like five or six, over the days, thought I would return them in the end because, I didn't want to go back to just return one. And then once I brought them back, they told me that they don't give back money for those. So I just bought basically six ugly plastic cups, which I didn't want and didn't need, and that also was poor communication, in my opinion, and should have been made more visible since I couldn't ask in English because those guys spoke so little English that even when I was trying to talk to her to give them back, she wasn't able to explain this to me, and my friend who spoke Spanish got it explained from her.
Then the second night, I stayed a bit longer and had to walk home alone. In that night, I met two Frenchmen on the way, talked a bit to them, and they told me that they arrived with a campervan on the second day and they were forced to park in Park D. So remember what I told you about campervan Park D, no infrastructure, super far. Imagine arriving on the second day and having to park there. About the way home, it was kind of dark, so you did need a flashlight. Otherwise, you would risk injuring yourself because the path wasn't even and you could hurt yourself. And a friend of mine told me that when she had to walk home alone the other night, that it was the first time that she didn't feel safe as a woman at a festival. Let that sink in.
Towards the end of the festival, we needed to get more water, so we headed over to Park B to fill our canisters. Once we arrived, we found out that Park B had no water. I asked a guy who told us that it has been like this for a while. So we actually had to walk all the way to the festival area to fill our water containers, remember it was like a 20-25 minute walk, and carry all the water back in the heat. Most days was around 35 degrees during the day, so we had to carry the water through the heat. I think that it's very poor that you had so little infrastructure on those parks, camper parks. Basically they only had Dixie toilets in Park B, Park C, and nothing in Park D. So what's that about? And don't forget, guys, we paid over 200€ for the ticket, I think around 250€ and our friend who booked late nearly 300€. It's just, we got, compared to other festivals, we got so little value for the money, and this is what bothers me most. If it was 75€, I would say you get what you pay for. But here you certainly didn't get your money's value, and I truly believe that we shouldn't accept this amount of carelessness by the organization. And I don't understand how it is possible that after hosting a festival already for a few times, you can still fuck up this badly and communicate this poorly and just disappoint.
I didn't take many photos because apart from the nature it didn't look that beautiful, but if you zoom in on the two photos, you can see the better looking part of the fence and the eye theme at the stage.
