Tilburg, Netherlands (AP) — The city of Tilburg in the southern Netherlands is seeing more colours than usual this weekend.
The 2025 edition of The Redhead Days Festival includes music, food trucks and workshops tailored to the specific needs of redheads, from makeup instructions to skin cancer prevention.
Organizers hope that the three-day event will attract thousands of participants from around 80 countries.
Elounda Bakker, a veteran of the 15th Dutch Festival, played cards with a group of redheaded friends from around the world who meet together each year at the festival.
“I mostly got out of curiosity, I came out just to see what it was like to not stand out in the crowd,” said the 29-year-old Backer.
Magician Daniel Hank traveled six hours from Germany to attend the festival.
“There aren’t many people with red beards, so I think it’s really easy to recognize me. Not many people have red hair,” he said.
The festival is free and open to everyone except for group photos on Sundays. The event is restricted to “natural” redheads.
The 2013 edition sets the Guinness World Record for the “large gathering of people with natural red hair,” with 1,672 people taking group photos.
This tradition came 20 years ago when Dutch artist Bad Lewenhorst called out 15 redhead models in a local newspaper for an art project. He received ten times the reaction he had hoped for and put together the group for photos.
The project received a lot of attention, and Rouwenhorst held a similar meetup the following year, expanding into today’s multi-date event, so he continues to oversee the festival.
“The festival is really great because they all have a similarity to each other and it feels like a family,” he said.
___
Follow the AP’s European report https://apnews.com/hub/europe
