Switzerland

No country packs so many festivals into so little land, and none stages them quite so beautifully. On the shores of Lake Geneva, the Montreux Jazz Festival wrote Switzerland into music history: ever since Miles Davis and Nina Simone, it has stretched its founding jazz into soul, rock and pop without ever losing the hushed elegance of its lakeside stages. At the far end of the lake, near Nyon, the Paléo Festival rolls out the country's biggest open-air bill every summer — six sold-out days in the Vaud countryside, proof that a nation of eight million can build giants.

Switzerland is just as much a country of mountain and city open-airs. In Bern, the Gurtenfestival sends its crowd up the Gurten hill overlooking the capital, while out east the Openair St. Gallen, the grandfather of Swiss open-airs, pitches its stages deep in the green Sittertobel valley. Yet it is on electronic ground that the country surprises most: in Zurich, the Street Parade turns the embankments into the largest techno procession on earth, the Caprices Festival drops its bass at 1,500 metres on the Crans-Montana plateau, and Zermatt Unplugged answers acoustically at the foot of the Matterhorn. FestT calculates your FestiScore — how well a lineup matches your favourite artists — and keeps dates, headliners and ticketing up to date.