There are music festivals built around spectacle, and then there is Montreux. For six decades, the Montreux Jazz Festival has drawn some of the greatest musicians in the world to a small Swiss town on the shores of Lake Geneva. Its setting is almost impossibly beautiful: the lake stretching toward the Alps, the promenade running along the water, music carrying through the warm summer air and, long after the formal concerts have ended, sometimes still audible at two in the morning. But Montreux has always been about more than the music on the printed programme. Its particular magic lies in the possibility of what happens around it: musicians crossing paths, appearing on one another's stages, joining late-night sessions and creating something that was never scheduled. After 60 years, that spontaneity may be the festival's greatest achievement.
RETURNING TO AN OLD FRIEND I first knew Montreux through its music—and through the particular atmosphere that surrounded it. The promenade along Lake Geneva, the Swiss summer air carrying the sound of horns and guitars, a Rivella or Panaché in hand, and the easy pleasure of moving between a performance, a meal and the lake. For years, the festival was predominantly jazz, with other genres appearing at the edges. That was its identity, and for many of its most devoted followers, its very definition. But the musical world changed. The greats who had defined Montreux were aging; some stopped performing, while a new generation of global festivals offered entirely different experiences. Glastonbury, Coachella, Mysteryland, Open Air festivals and, in its own extraordinary category, Burning Man became part of a much broader international festival culture. I found myself preferring music experiences in completely different places and for completely different reasons. Montreux became a memory. Then I returned. It felt like visiting an old friend who had grown older but somehow remained unmistakably themselves. The lake was still there, the promenade still alive, and somewhere in the summer air the horns and guitars were still playing. But the music had changed. The festival had opened itself to rock, pop, soul, R&B, electronic music and contemporary jazz, alongside the tradition that created it. The magic had survived the transformation. The audiences were still coming. The major performances were still selling out. The small rooms still mattered. Musicians still appeared on one another's stages, and the possibility of an unexpected collaboration remained part of the experience. What had once been a predominantly jazz gathering had become something much broader without becoming anonymous. That is perhaps the real story of Montreux at 60: not that it remained unchanged, but that it changed—and remained Montreux.
SIXTY YEARS OF MUSIC Founded in 1967 by Claude Nobs, René Langel and Géo Voumard, the festival began as a three-day jazz event. Over six decades it became one of the world's most important musical institutions, attracting artists from Miles Davis and Nina Simone to Ella Fitzgerald, Aretha Franklin, Prince and David Bowie. The festival's history is now an important part of the cultural record. The Claude Nobs Collection, documenting the festival from 1967 to 2012, was inscribed on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register, preserving an extraordinary audiovisual archive of the musicians and performances that helped define modern music. Yet Montreux was never simply about collecting famous names. Its reputation was built on proximity: musicians meeting musicians, listening to one another and sometimes deciding to play together. That special Swiss, yet truly global spirit remains.
A FESTIVAL THAT REFUSES TO STAND STILL The 60th edition demonstrated just how far Montreux has evolved beyond its origins as a purely jazz festival. RAYE opened the anniversary edition with Moments in Time, accompanied by a 23-piece orchestra and joined by Alicia Keys and Mark Ronson. Sting brought an intimate trio performance, while Deep Purple returned to the shores whose history inspired Smoke on the Water. Lewis Capaldi brought his emotionally direct pop to a setting dramatically smaller than the enormous audiences he normally commands. On other stages, Ezra Collective, Joy Crookes and Zara Larsson represented very different generations and sounds. Jazz, soul, rock, pop, R&B and contemporary music now coexist across the festival's stages. The transformation was not always easy. When Montreux began expanding beyond jazz, there was a period when some questioned whether bringing in so many genres would dilute the identity that had made the festival special. The concern was understandable. Montreux had built its reputation around a particular sound and an extraordinary generation of musicians. But the world of music was changing, and the festival had to change with it. Sixty years later, the experiment has become the institution. Montreux has expanded its musical vocabulary without abandoning its curiosity.
THE SPIRIT OF MONTREUX The real magic, however, happens beyond the headline acts. It lives in the small venues, late-night sessions and unexpected encounters, where a musician can finish a major performance and appear somewhere else simply to play with another artist. It is the spirit that defined Montreux in the era of Miles Davis, when some of the greatest musicians in the world could cross paths, listen, improvise and create something that had never been programmed. That tradition remains part of the festival's DNA. It is also why Montreux can feel so different from the enormous, highly choreographed music festivals that dominate the contemporary calendar. There is still a sense that the musicians are there not only to perform, but to listen. In 2026, that spirit was visible from the opening night, when Alicia Keys and Mark Ronson joined RAYE during her anniversary performance. But the larger point is not the celebrity cameo. It is the culture that allows those moments to happen. You come for one artist. You may leave having witnessed something that was never on the programme.
WHERE THE GREATS BECOME ACCESSIBLE The master classes and workshops extend that intimacy further. For two weeks, musicians, students and serious aficionados can do more than listen to extraordinary artists from a distance. They can sit in on conversations about the music, its history and the craft behind it, with sessions examining figures such as Miles Davis, Prince, David Bowie and Gil Scott-Heron. That access is particularly special because Montreux brings so much musical history together in one place and within a concentrated period of time. A listener can move from a major performance to a smaller room, from a contemporary artist to a discussion about a legendary recording, and from an evening concert to a workshop the following day. For musicians, it offers something even rarer: the opportunity to learn from people who were actually there. The master class is more than an educational programme. It is another expression of Montreux's fundamental idea—that music is something to be shared, discussed, discovered and played, not simply consumed.
The Place Matters Then there is Montreux itself. The lake, the mountains and the compact scale of the town create an intimacy that the world's largest festival grounds simply cannot reproduce. Music is everywhere. It moves between the formal venues and the waterfront, between the main stages and smaller rooms, between afternoon performances and late-night sessions. You can hear jazz in one room and contemporary pop somewhere else. You can encounter rock history on the lakeshore and a new generation of musicians on another stage. The geography encourages discovery. Walking back to your hotel at 1 a.m. after a remarkable performance by a musical great, whose concert had simply “happened” to have another great stop by and join them on stage, the lake glistened beneath a warm Swiss summer night. The town was calm, yet somewhere in the distance, the sounds of instruments could be heard lyrically drifting through the air. Here in Montreux, the concert might have ended, but the music had not.
SIX DECADES LATER The 60th anniversary is therefore less about looking backward than understanding why Montreux has survived. It has changed enormously. It is no longer a festival solely for jazz devotees, and perhaps it could not have remained relevant if it had been. Its expansion into multiple genres has not erased the characteristics that made it unique. It still attracts the greats. It still attracts musicians who want to play. It still attracts audiences who want to listen. Remarkably, it can still bring hundreds of thousands of people to an idyllic lakeside Swiss town for two weeks of music. That is not simply the achievement of a successful festival. It is the achievement of a cultural institution that understood that evolution does not have to mean abandoning identity. In this era when many festivals compete through scale, spectacle and ever-larger productions, Montreux offers something considerably more difficult to manufacture: history, intimacy and spontaneity in the same place. The setting cannot be replicated. The archive cannot be recreated. And the possibility of hearing extraordinary musicians unexpectedly play together cannot be programmed. Perhaps that is why, on a warm summer night in July, the music can still be heard along the lake long after midnight. Montreux has evolved. It has not lost itself. It has simply learned how to keep listening.