Moldejazz Festival

Moldejazz is one of the oldest jazz festivals in Europe, founded in 1961 and held every July in Molde. For a week in the middle of summer, the town transforms: outdoor stages are set up along the waterfront and in the central streets, international acts perform in the main concert venue, and the town's population roughly doubles with festival visitors arriving from across Norway and beyond.

The festival mixes established jazz names with younger artists and acts that stretch loosely beyond jazz into blues, world music, and singer-songwriter territory. The main venue is the Molde Cultural Centre, but outdoor stages and café sessions run throughout the day. Tickets for headline acts can sell out months in advance; many sessions in smaller venues remain available. The festival coincides with Norwegian summer at its most pleasant — long days, relatively mild temperatures, and the fjord and mountains providing a backdrop of unusual beauty for an outdoor concert. If you can arrange your visit to coincide with the festival, it is significantly more rewarding than a visit outside it.

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A story
Moldejazz was founded in 1961 by a group of local jazz enthusiasts who simply decided to invite musicians they admired to their town. The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation agreed to broadcast the concerts, which gave the festival national reach immediately. Miles Davis played in 1964, and the combination of a world-class line-up in a scenic small town created a format that European jazz festivals would follow for decades. The festival has maintained a reputation for booking significant artists — not exclusively jazz — in intimate settings, which makes tickets relatively easy to obtain even for headline acts.