The City of Zagreb and city institutions will continue to support the InMusic festival in the coming years, this year's support amounted to nearly 2.4 million kuna, and with the support from the Zagreb Tourist Board, it amounts to nearly 3.3 million kuna, the City of Zagreb said.

The statement was made in response to claims by InMusic organiser Zoran Maric, who announced that the largest festival in Croatia might close down, saying that it would definitely not be possible to hold the next edition without a “strategic partnership with Zagreb” and an increase in funding, “in accordance with the practices of other European cities.”

The City of Zagreb said that the InMusic festival was an important popular culture phenomenon and positioned Zagreb on the popular culture map of Europe in the best possible way, underscoring that the City of Zagreb and its partners supported and would support the festival in the coming years.

The city’s support for InMusic includes support from the City Office for Culture, International Relations and Civil Society, the Sports Facilities Management branch of the Zagreb Holding multi-utility conglomerate, which allows the festival to use free-of-charge three Jarun islands for 42 or 20 days, and the Zagreb Tourist Board, which supported this year’s edition with HRK 1,750,000, or 40% more than in 2019.

The City said that the Tourist Board had written a letter of intent for strategic partnership, saying it would support InMusic in the coming years in the same amount as this year or greater if possible (depending on tourism trends).

In addition to these three sources, a fourth one will be available as of this autumn – the City Office for Economy, Environmental Sustainability and Strategic Planning will launch a tender for events, and the organizers of InMusic can also submit their application.

InMusic is also a commercial event, financed by the sale of (25,000) tickets, and it has its sponsors and lessees of hospitality premises.

“It is therefore necessary to strike a balance between the commercial and sponsored part, while maintaining the high quality of the programme,” the City of Zagreb said.

Maric said that the actual funding received from the city was only 1.6 million kuna, which, according to him accounts for 10 percent of the cost to run the festival. He also called for what he said was standard practice in European cities, where 30 percent on festival costs are covered by local authorities.

This implies that festival organizers would like to see Zagreb increase its funding threefold to 4.8 million kuna.