Dear Fusionists of all lands,

After a long and beautiful late summer, the nasty autumn caught us off last week. In Lärz, everything is slowly transitioning into winter mode, and work is naturally being scaled back due to weather conditions. In recent weeks, alongside all the cleanup work, we've been busy building our future solar installation. We'll surely have more to tell you about this in spring. In our Berlin office, the workflow is now steeply rising as ticketing starts earlier this year than in the past two years. As before Corona, the 14-day registration phase begins on December 1st! (More info under: Fusion 2025 Tickets)

We would love to only share great stories and exciting news about the upcoming festival. However, we cannot avoid first addressing the state of our world. A world that has brought so much suffering, pain, hunger, and death to so many people this year that we, as mega-privileged festival organizers and prosperity-fusionists, cannot move on to business as usual without saying a few words. If you're tired of reading about this, you can skip this section and jump ahead to Fewer Tickets...

We cannot and do not want to address each current catastrophe individually - there are too many. Nevertheless, a few numbers and remarks are important to us. Our once-yearly parallel society does not exempt us from remaining indifferent to suffering and injustice in this increasingly dystopian world, and we should always remember our moral compass, which we like to calibrate at Fusion.

The war in Ukraine continues relentlessly. An end to the senseless dying on both sides is not in sight, and efforts toward diplomatic solutions remain far distant. Ukraine is the battlefield for geostrategic interests, both Putin's and those of the Western world. The increasing militarization of politics and society - something that we in Germany, considering two perpetrated world wars, couldn't have imagined in our dreams just a few years ago - we see as a danger to all our futures. .

In other parts of the world, need, suffering, death, or the struggle for bare survival is even more severe and brutal than what we receive daily in the media reports from Ukraine.

Tens of thousands of people have died in Sudan's civil war over the past 17 months. This war has led to the world's largest hunger crisis and over ten million displaced people. Southern Africa is experiencing its worst drought in over 100 years. Millions of people are suffering from hunger and water scarcity.

The war in Gaza finds no end. It has been expanded by Israel's ground offensive into Lebanon. Despite the arrest warrants issued by the ICC for war crimes and crimes against humanity against Netanyahu, Galant, and Hamas leader Deif (who has likely been liquidated by Israel by now), Netanyahu and his far-right government continue this war against the people in Gaza with undiminished harshness. Whether a lasting ceasefire will be achieved in Lebanon remains to be seen.

Israel/Palestine at Fusion2024

After this brief serious excursion to other parts of the planet, we want to move on to Fusion topics, but first stay briefly with the Palestine theme, as this was the major issue leading up to the festival.

In several newsletters, we had outlined our position on this complex topic and drawn few red lines for the festival.

For the festival, it was important to us to create a space where different positions could coexist and be tolerated, as long as mutual respect is maintained. We deliberately chose to bind the power of definition over what should be sayable or showable at Fusion to freedom of expression and art, rather than give it away.

We expected that many of the invited artists and Fusionists would stand in solidarity with all those people fighting for just peace in Israel and Palestine and for an end to the war and occupation. It was expected that this would also be expressed at Fusion - and that not everyone would appreciate this.

We received harsh criticism from various sides beforehand. In public, a narrative of fear was deliberately created that questioned the safety of Jewish people at the festival. It's good to see that this self-fulfilling prophecy did not materialize and reality showed a different picture.

The awareness team, which had been increased just in case, only had a single case in this context. All in all, Fusion proceeded exactly as we had expected and demanded from our guests and staff - respectfully and peacefully. We want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who contributed to this.

Since we've now arrived at the summary, let's continue with other things we want to mention in this newsletter. It goes without saying that this is only a tiny fraction of what could be said and shared. At this point, we'd like to direct your attention to our forum on the Fusion website, where many festival topics are discussed in what we find to be increasingly respectful and sophisticated discourse.

Fewer Tickets

= Less Crowding = More Fun for All

5000 fewer tickets than last year really benefited the festival. The infrastructure wasn't pushed to its limits. Overall, everyone had to wait in line a bit less, and there was enough space wherever people celebrated, danced, or chilled.

How beautiful it was to get lost on the grounds and be confronted with countless small and large overwhelming situations. Sensory overload times 1000. In numbers, there were 1,400 bookings with 2,400 artists, 12,300 staff and crew members, plus 2,000 supporters and 65,000 guests who together created our holiday-communist state of emergency.

Arrival and Traffic Jam 2024

Arrival was significantly more relaxed this year than in 2023. We learned from our mistakes, yet there's still room for improvement. Even though we could avoid traffic jams on the federal highway this year, there were significant problems with directing people to the camping areas. This wasn't due to our guides, but to the vehement resistance of some of our guests who ignored or aggressively refused the parking crew's instructions and thus brought all traffic on the camping areas to a standstill.

We will no longer tolerate such behavior in the future. If you want to camp in a group with more tha one vehicle, you must arrive as a group together. Waiting for latecomers in the middle of our camping paths is a NO-GO - just like generously blocking off areas for latecomers. In 2025, we will handle the guidance to camping areas more stringently. So organize yourselves in advance. Leave together or meet well beforehand on the way!

The extra areas for XL campers have proven successful. We will fine-tune this a bit more, but the camping areas for XL vehicles will be available again. (Info about XL tickets can be found under Tickets 2025)

Pfandraising 2024

Through the abolition of bottle deposits and the introduction of Pfandraising, which was further refined, our system has finally established itself in its third year. Through the Solitaler, a 50 cent surcharge that was always due when someone came to a bar without a bottle, we were again able to generate a considerable donation sum that will likely exceed last year's €141,500. The exact donation amount will be clarified in the coming days when the broken glass has been collected, weighed, and sent for recycling. Here, Kulturkosmos pays another 10 cents per broken glass bottle into the donation pot.

Thanks to the 2024 Pfandraising, we were already able to donate €100,000 to Safe Passage Fund, who sent us the following message:

"With the support of Kultur Kosmos and the Fusion Festival donors, we're able to support dozens of grassroots movements that are working to save lives of people on the move in distress at the external(ized) EU borders, from the so-called Balkan route to the Poland-Belarus forest to regions around the Mediterranean. This work is overlooked and underfunded, yet it is more important than ever to encourage civil society's solidarity and to fight together for freedom of movement in a time where we face the rise of the far-right in Germany and across Europe. We therefore very much look forward to keeping you updated on our work and to future collaborations."

€6,670 were donated directly to Sea Punks.

€10,000 were donated to Medibüro in Berlin for medical refugee assistance.

Through the donation campaign with the 25 Years Fusion posters, which were distributed at the exits in exchange for donations to Medico International, €18,230 could be donated for Emergency Aid - Gaza, where it is more than urgently needed.

Fusion 18+ and Youth Culture

Fusion being 18+ was the result of pressure from our regulatory office. But now it's becoming apparent that increasingly young people are voting for the fucking AFD and are too often susceptible to racist slogans or draw attention to themselves and their nationalistically clouded spirit with homophobic and queer-hostile actions. We ask ourselves whether it would be more sensible to allow young people under 18 access to our parallel society before they are dumbed down by right-wing demagogues and social media. This seems more important and preventively more sensible to us than supposedly protecting them from alcohol or drug abuse through youth protection laws. A discussion we will face, even if it probably won't lead to any change in the +18 requirement for the coming year.

No Photo Policy

It has shown that there is indeed progress in sensitizing our guests to the sensitivities of a large number of celebrating Fusionists. There's still room for improvement and we will continue this policy, without banning memory snapshots or taping up everyone's cameras.

Fusion By Bike

Is a trend that has grown exponentially in recent years. Not that we find it problematic when people arrive by bike - on the contrary. But the folding bike or other two-wheeled vehicle now seems to be a must-have for Fusion. The whole thing is understandable from a laziness perspective, but in recent years it has taken on proportions that are increasingly becoming a problem. This has also been warned about by the event approval authorities.

What was once the means of transportation for our crews, who sometimes depend on a bike for quick routes, has now completely gotten out of hand, both with the crews and our guests. More and more Fusionists think they need to travel the festival in turbo mode by bike to avoid wearing out their shoes.

The paths of the grounds are not designed to accommodate all pedestrians and the absolutely necessary vehicle traffic, plus space for all the cyclists. Since almost everyone wants to lock their bicycle somewhere, this means that wherever we have a gate, an escape route, or an access point and want to open it, we now need to have a bolt cutter or even a cordless angle grinder on board. Bikes are often simply left in the dark, e.g., on emergency routes and cause avoidable accidents. Others race through the crowd with 2.5 per mille in their tea and drink in hand. The bicycle gate at the district road collapses from Wednesday on and with it the control of the wristbands.

For 2025, we will have to come up with something to drastically restrict bicycle traffic during the festival. You should prepare yourself for the fact that in the future, you will again walk on foot on the direct festival grounds, as in old times and at all other festivals.

Awareness

A topic that has concerned us and many of you for years is awareness. As announced, we have restructured and further professionalized our awareness structure. Our new Awareness Point on the runway had open ears around the clock for various problems and could provide people with help and support or refer them to other support structures on the grounds. We will evaluate quite a few things here and optimize for summer 2025.

GHB Alert

Many of you probably noticed the excitement about allegedly GHB-laced tampons. These rumors spread rapidly across the festival grounds and caused unnecessary fears. Together with our doctors, we could quickly clarify: The described scenarios were technically not feasible - the alleged danger was a rumor. The incident shows how important it is to keep a cool head with such reports and check the facts first. Some crews had already spread warnings without consultation with the festival office in the excitement - we would like to apologize for this retrospectively.

Tickets 2025

From December 1st to 14th, you must place your order for your ticket in our Ticket Area and register for the lottery. Cliques, to win or lose together, are possible again. The first lottery takes place on December 19th. However, you can only transfer money from January 1st, and it must be with us by January 21st at the latest. On February 5th, the second lottery follows with payment deadline until February 19th. The ticket price remains at €220 including €10 garbage deposit for the third year in a row.

The additional tickets for the Insel-Area vehicles and XL campers will be sold in spring 2025. All ticket holders will be informed about this well in advance.

If you would like to support the festival through volunteer work, you can apply as a supporter from December 1st to 12th. This way, in case of rejection, you still have the opportunity to register for the ticket lottery in time.

We wish you all good luck with ticketing and remember, losing once doesn't mean sitting out ;)

Artist-Care-Crew

Our artist care crew is looking for support. You can find more information on our Fusion website.

Final Thanks

Finally, we want to say thank you. To all Fusionists who have once again made this 25th Fusion an unique and unforgettable festival. All the acquaintances and friendships, the collective letting go on our floors, the happy faces that smiled at us from everywhere, and the sense of belonging to a large number of people who wish for a better, more peaceful, more open and freer world would not have been possible without you. Thanks to all the artists who brought our program to life and tore us away from our realities. Thanks to our crews, our permanent employees in the offices or on the construction sites, our supporters. You are all the foundation of every Fusion Festival. Thanks also to the residents and people from the region.

With rhythm towards change, Your Kulturkosmos