The festival, which attracted a record 700,000 visitors last year, will be divided into five major segments, among them the traditional Folkart, which will feature folk ensembles from Egypt, Columbia, Cyprus, Ukraine, Lithuania, Romania, Macedonia and Slovenia.

Apart from concerts and shows, the 21st edition of the Lent festival will feature as many as 1,400 accompanying events and performers coming from 38 countries.

The concert highlights for this year include Uriah Heep, OPM, Mnozil Brass, Osibisa, Manu Katche, the Martin Medeski & Wood trio, Tony Allen, Bill Evans Soulgrass, Psihomodo pop and Edo Maajka.

Events will be staged at around 40 venues around the city, with the heart of the festival remaining the big floating stage on the river Drava.

Already the opening night, for which Maribor Mayor Andrej Fištravec as well as PM Alenka Bratušek will be on hand, will bring a few top-notch acts, including Macedonia's guitar virtuoso Vlatko Stefanovski on the Drava stage.

This year, the organisers, the Maribor Narodni Dom theatre, managed to get EUR 2.2m to fund the festival, after festival director Vladimir Rukavina expressed doubts at the beginning of the year that the festival would take place at all. He has recently said that it was possible to avoid programme cuts despite the more modest funding.