The brand-new winter balfolk festival in the sportive heart of Ghent.

BalhallaFestival is your winter escape: live bands, dance floors, new friends & good vibes. No experience needed just come move, connect & discover something new.

We’ll be dancing from February 27 to March 1, 2026, in the venue of Sport Vlaanderen Gent. For three days, we’ll offer you:

• a wooden sprung 600 m² dance floor

• a cozy jam space for musicians

• inspiring music and dance workshops

• an open stage full of surprising talent

• the best of the Belgian folk music scene, topped off with a few international headliners

• a fully wheelchair-accessible festival

BalhallaFestival vzw is a volunteer‑driven organisation based in Ghent that brings balfolk – the warm, connecting blend of European traditional dance and live music – to life through an annual winter folk dance festival. The organisation grew out of our sister association Balhalla vzw, which built a strong local community through monthly bals and dance initiatives. BalhallaFestival vzw focuses on linking this local community with the vibrant national and international folk scene.

Our mission is both simple and ambitious: to create a place where people of all ages, backgrounds and nationalities can dance, make music, learn and meet each other. Balfolk is not a spectator culture but a participatory one, and that is exactly what we want to strengthen. We build a community where beginners and experienced dancers inspire one another, where amateur musicians grow by playing together, and where international exchange happens naturally on the dance floor.

With BalhallaFestival, we highlight this mission every year. We bring top musicians together on a high‑quality dance floor, offer workshops for all levels, and create space for spontaneous jams, encounters and creativity. Inclusion and accessibility are essential to us: a safe, welcoming atmosphere in which everyone feels at home, with or without experience.

BalhallaFestival is supported by a large and dedicated volunteer network. Throughout the year, more than 20 regular volunteers contribute to organisation, technique, communication, decor and logistics. During the festival, this grows into an international team of about 120 motivated volunteers. Together they handle setup, welcome, bar, assisting participants, jams, atmosphere and much more. Thanks to this strong participatory structure, we can build a professional, inclusive and creative festival carried by the community itself.

Beyond the festival, we intentionally invest in projects that strengthen the broader Flemish folk community. For example, in collaboration with Danspunt, we facilitate networking moments for balfolk organisers, where ideas, experiences and challenges are shared and new partnerships take shape.

We are also strongly committed to young people through our new project “Folk in the Youth Movement”. With this initiative, we offer playful workshops and small bals for youth groups who want to reintroduce social, connecting forms of dancing to their members. No complicated choreography, but simple group dances, live music and plenty of fun. Folk naturally brings movement, cooperation and connection together, ideal for youth leaders looking for fresh activities that get everyone involved. In this way, we introduce young people to balfolk as a modern, inclusive and highly accessible dance form full of energy.