Features¶

Everything your festival needs in one place — schedule, artists, volunteers, tickets, sponsors, press and more. Use what you need; everything is connected, so updating a record in one area updates it everywhere.

Schedule¶

One source of truth for stages, sets, soundchecks and dependencies.

Editions — every running of the festival is its own record, with start / end dates, language, and a publicly discoverable setting that controls listing in the Festival Hub.
Venues — stages, rooms, off-site locations. Each venue carries a capacity, a type, an opening map pin, and images.
Slots — each scheduled performance or soundcheck. A slot links an artist to a venue for a specific time window, with an optional Aufbau (stage setup) window between get-in and soundcheck. Double bookings are flagged automatically.
Weather backup plan — for an outdoor slot, add a bad-weather alternative (typically the same act, same time, an indoor venue) without losing the original: the two are tracked as a pair so moving or clearing one never touches the other, and switching a stage between its fair- and bad-weather running order is one tap from Festinato Ops.
Programme exports — a print-ready PDF for your printed programme, a web-ready version, and a data feed for third-party screens. A separate Schedule Grid export lays out every venue as a column against 30-minute rows for the whole day — one page per day, and a separate page for the fair-weather and bad-weather line-up whenever a weather backup plan is in use, so crews only ever print the pages that apply. The regular programme also drives digital signage and subscribable calendar feeds.

Artists¶

Self-service portal for everyone on the bill — no more shared Drive folders.

Profile — name, genre tags, biography, photo, social links.
Programme profile — artists submit their own headline, bio and social links (Spotify, YouTube, Bandcamp, MX3, Instagram and more) directly from the portal for use in the mobile app and public programme listing. Changes go to the programme manager for review before they appear.
Technical rider — input list, stage plot, monitor requirements.
LLM-assisted rider import — upload a PDF rider the artist has already written; Festinato extracts the input list, channel assignments, monitor requirements and backline items automatically and pre-populates the back-office fields for review. Requires a configured OpenAI-compatible LLM endpoint — set it up under Festinato → Settings → Rider extraction.
Hospitality rider — dietary preferences, dressing-room needs.
Travel — arrival / departure times, transport mode, pickup contact.
Payment — fee, currency, payout method (cash, bank transfer or invoice), payout account, invoice upload.
Sign-off — artists confirm the rider and payment terms; the timestamp lands on the artist record.

Artists log in at my.festinato.app with a magic link sent to their booking email — no password to forget. See Portal for the full list of pages available to each role.

Backline & packing lists¶

Keep the technical rider as structured data, not just a PDF.

Equipment catalogue — a reusable list of backline and audio gear (mics, monitors, DI boxes…) grouped into categories, under Festinato → Audio Equipment.
Per-artist requirements — attach equipment items with quantities to each act so the full list is easy to search and filter, not buried in a PDF.
Packing list — a per-venue PDF that rolls every act's backline up into the maximum quantity of each item needed at that stage, plus a per-artist breakdown — the sheet the stage crew works from.

Accommodation¶

Manage artist and crew hotels without a spreadsheet.

Hotels & rooms — record each hotel (address, front-desk contact) and the rooms you've blocked for an edition, with a room type (single, double, twin, triple, quad, suite) and a capacity.
Allocate rooms — from an artist's Hotel tab, the Allocate rooms wizard reads the party size (musicians + crew), shows the rooms free for the chosen check-in / check-out window, and pre-selects the smallest set that fits. Confirm to create the bookings.
Assignments — each booking carries check-in / check-out dates (and a computed night count) plus occupant name, email and phone. Overlapping bookings on the same room are blocked.
Rooming list — a per-hotel PDF for the front desk, grouped by edition and room, listing occupants, dates, nights and the act each room belongs to.

A calendar view of all assignments and per-edition room totals (blocked / assigned / free) round out the picture.

Bar & supplies¶

Plan the drinks order and the rented bar equipment per edition — and see what it does to the budget while you type.

Catalogue — one reusable list of everything you order: drinks (with their packaging — a 33 cl bottle in a crate of 24, a 20 l keg) and rented equipment (fridges, beer taps, furniture), each with a default supplier and price.
Orders — per-edition orders to each supplier, moving through draft → ordered → delivered, with deposits tracked for the return run after the festival. Start next year's order from last year's with one click.
Bars & backstage — every order line is destined for an outlet ("Main Bar", "Foyer Bar", "Backstage Mainstage"), so delivery day is sorted before the truck arrives.
Print-outs — an order sheet per supplier, a picking list that tells the crew what goes to which bar, and a bar menu.
Budget-aware — ordered totals flow into the edition's budget automatically, split into drink supply and equipment rental.

Contracts¶

Issue, sign and archive performance contracts end-to-end.

Templates — write the legal text once with merge fields like {artist_name}, {fee} and {slot_summary}; reuse it across artists.
Portal signing — the artist signs from their portal with a typed name and drawn signature; you countersign from the back-office.
Locked PDF — once sent, the contract text is frozen. The final countersigned PDF is emailed to both parties and can be verified as unchanged.

See Contracts for the full guide and the list of supported template variables.

Volunteers¶

Built for the festival where everyone's a volunteer and the festival where no one is.

Shifts — define shifts against venues or tasks, with a minimum and maximum head-count.
Signup — volunteers browse open shifts and claim what fits.
Swaps — volunteers can release a shift; the released slot reopens for signup.
No-show alerts — late check-ins trigger a notification to the shift lead.
Briefings — per-shift briefing documents and contact details.

Volunteers sign in at my.festinato.app with a magic link — no account to register. From the portal they can accept or decline shifts, view briefing documents, and check in on the day.

Open calls & applications¶

Recruit acts and crew straight from your website — submissions land in the back-office, not someone's inbox.

Artist open call — a public apply form on your site captures name, contact, genre, biography, band size, links (auto-sorted into YouTube, Spotify, Bandcamp, MX3, Instagram and the rest) and a photo. Each submission creates an artist record in the Applied state, ready to triage; the applicant gets an acknowledgement email and your team gets a notification.
Volunteer recruitment — an opt-in volunteer join form for the planning phase, before shifts even exist. Prospective crew tick the festival days they're free and the roles that interest them. Responses build an availability roster (a day-by-day grid per volunteer) you review and confirm in the back-office. Off by default; switch it on while you're recruiting for an edition.

Both forms are bot-protected and edition-aware, and both send the applicant an acknowledgement plus an optional internal notification — recipients are set in Settings.

Box office¶

Sell tickets and supporter wristbands from your own festival address — or link out to the ticketer you already use.

Ticket types — general-admission tickets per edition, fixed price or pay what you want with a minimum and suggested amounts (the supporter-wristband and donation model), each with a quota, a sales window and a per-order limit.
Online shop — a shop page on your festival's own address. Checkout runs through your festival's own Mollie account — cards, TWINT, Apple Pay, Google Pay, iDEAL and Bancontact — so the money lands directly in the festival's account, never ours.
Fulfilment — QR tickets emailed as a PDF on payment confirmation, with resend from the back-office.
Gate scan — staff scan tickets at the gate from Festinato Ops: an instant valid / already-scanned / invalid verdict, with a manual search fallback.
Takings — sales flow automatically into the edition's takings and profit & loss, and sold-versus-scanned counts show how the gate is doing.
Refunds — whole-order refunds issued by an operator from the back-office; the tickets are revoked and the day's takings corrected.
External link mode — already selling on Eventfrog or another ticketer? Point the app's Tickets page at your external shop, with an optional info text, and skip the rest.

Running your own box office requires the Community tier or above; external link mode is available on every tier. See Box office for the setup guide.

Sponsors¶

Closes the loop on the part of the festival that pays for the rest.

Logo packs — drop the sponsor logo in once; we render the right variant for printed programme, web header, app splash, signage.
Deliverables — contracted mentions, on-stage thank-yous, social posts. The dashboard shows what's outstanding.
Reporting — impressions, mentions, click-throughs, scanned QR scans of sponsor-tagged content.

Press & media¶

Run the press desk from inside Festinato — newsroom, accreditation and clippings book in one place.

Press room — a public /press page with your published releases and a downloadable press kit (logos, photos, fact sheets, stage plots).
Press portal — a private, link-based page for each accredited journalist showing their accreditation status, the full kit (including assets you keep off the public room) and an interview-request form.
Accreditation — a public application form, a back-office approval queue, and a printable press pass.
Releases — press releases with embargo dates and a distribution list you email in one click.
Coverage — a clippings book of the articles, reviews and broadcasts you earn, with outlet, link and sentiment.

The press room is on by default; accreditation is opt-in. See Press & media for the full guide.

Plan the marketing calendar and post to your social channels from the same place you book the acts.

Activity calendar — every planned communication — a social post, a newsletter, a poster run — as one card with an owner, a date (or a date range for a multi-day campaign) and a status, so the team sees at a glance what's announced and what's overdue.
Connected accounts — link your Facebook Page, Instagram and Mastodon accounts once, under Settings → Communications.
Scheduled posts — write a post (text + images), pick the channels, and schedule it. Festinato publishes it at the chosen time to every selected channel at once — a failure on one platform never blocks the others.
Generate from an artist — one click drafts an announcement post from an act's record — name, photo, stage, day and time — using a wording template you can adjust. Where the artist has shared their handles, they're tagged automatically.
Engagement — likes, comments and shares are pulled back onto each post, so you can see which announcements landed.

Operators can also post on the go from Festinato Ops.

Daily summary email¶

One email per morning with everything that needs a decision — so the team starts the day from the same list instead of digging through the back-office.

The digest covers understaffed shifts, slots still without an act, today's day tasks, approvals waiting in the queue, flagged captures from the field, and new artist applications — the same items Festinato Ops shows in its "needs you" stack, so phone and inbox never disagree. It only goes out when there is actually something to report.

Off by default; switch it on and set the recipients under Festinato → Settings → Daily summary.

Reports¶

Attendance, payouts, sustainability, accessibility — the numbers your board, your council grant and your insurer all need, exported as PDF or CSV.

Artist, volunteer and venue portal¶

All participants — artists, volunteers, and venue coordinators — sign in at my.festinato.app with a magic link sent to their email. No password, no account to register. Access is granted automatically when a person is added to the relevant back-office records (artist booking, volunteer roster, venue contact list).

The portal is role-aware: navigation adapts to show only the pages relevant to the signed-in user’s roles. A festival switcher in the top bar lets multi-festival participants switch events without logging out. A person who is both a volunteer and a venue contact sees both sections without logging in again.

The summary below lists the headline pages per role; the Portal guide documents every page, who can edit what, and how role and festival switching work.

Artist pages¶

Schedule — own slots and soundchecks, in today / festival-week / all-sets views; a compact mobile-Today card for on-the-day use.
Tasks — to-dos set by the organiser.
Documents — contracts, technical specs, sign-off forms for download.
Rider — technical and hospitality rider, viewable and editable by the artist.
Travel — arrival / departure details and pickup contact.
Payment — fee, invoice status and payout account (cash, bank transfer or invoice, with an optional invoice PDF upload).
SUISA list — Swiss royalty reporting: the artist fills in (or uploads) and signs the per-show repertoire declaration. Appears only when SUISA submission is enabled. See SUISA list.

Volunteer pages¶

Shifts — browse available shifts, accept or release assignments. Subscribe to a personal .ics calendar feed so shift changes land in any calendar app.
Documents — read-only briefings and training materials.
Profile — edit contact details: phone, mobile, T-shirt size and a personal note for the organiser.
Artist info — where shared by the organiser, see per-artist performance times, backline requirements, hotel assignments and contact details for the acts being supported. Read-only.

Venue pages¶

Venue sheet — edit doors, curfew, noise level limits and notes; the same sheet artists and crew read in read-only form.
Schedule — all acts and soundchecks programmed at this venue.
Shifts — volunteer shifts assigned here, with head-count and per-volunteer acceptance status.
Documents — venue-specific tech specs and briefings.
Contacts — operations leads and emergency contacts.
Payment checklist — per-slot fee and SUISA status, with a cash sign-off checkbox.
Material checklist — per-year equipment packing list; past years are read-only history.
Manager to-do — per-year task checklist scoped to one venue or all venues; past years are read-only history.

Mobile app¶

The app your audience downloads. Two flavours share the same code, so the experience is identical.

Branded¶

Your own app name, your own icon, your own colours. Published under your own App Store and Play Store accounts. One app, one festival.

Festival Hub¶

A single Hub app lists every festival flagged publicly discoverable. Users download the Hub once and pick which festival to follow on first launch. Switching festivals is seamless — favourites and downloads are saved separately for each festival.

Both flavours include:

Schedule with timeline and now-playing
Artist pages with photo, bio, genre tags
Venue map and directions
News feed and push notifications
Bookmarks (synced across devices)

There's a separate app for your team

The mobile app above is for attendees. Your organiser staff get Festinato Ops — the back-office in your pocket for running the schedule, checking crew in and clearing approvals from the field.

Digital signage¶

Point any screen with a browser at a signage URL and it becomes a live "now & next" board — the current set plus the next three at each stage, refreshing itself every minute.

Per-venue or all-venues — show one stage, or rotate through every public venue on a loop.
Built for the wall — full-screen, no chrome, high-contrast, with a light or dark theme and an optional logo for a sponsor-branded stand.
Resilient — an offline cache keeps the last programme on screen through a short network drop.

Calendar feeds¶

Every schedule is also a calendar feed, so a programme lands in Google, Apple or Outlook Calendar and updates itself when you move a set.

Full programme — the whole edition as one feed.
Per artist — a single act's sets across every edition.
My favourites — an app user's bookmarked artists, as a personal feed.

Push notifications¶

Compose a message in the Push notifications screen, optionally link it to an artist or venue, and click Send now. Delivery is automatic to all your app users — whether they use your branded app or the Festival Hub on iOS or Android.

Scheduled sends (e.g. “doors open in one hour”) queue against the edition's local time-zone.

Fundraising¶

A donation campaign sits inside an edition — a goal amount, a description, and an optional matched-funding pledge. Donors check out through a secure payment page; receipts are emailed automatically and tagged for year-end donation reports.

Membership¶

For festivals run by an association (Verein), a public become a member form on your website captures a prospective member's contact details and a short message. The submission creates (or matches) a contact, tags it as a membership request, drops an acknowledgement in their inbox, and notifies your team — so the back-office Contacts app becomes your membership pipeline.

News¶

A simple, image-led news feed that appears in the mobile app, the website, and (optionally) as a push notification. Each post carries a publish date, an optional embargo, and an optional link to an artist or venue.

Info blocks¶

Write the practical bits once — parking, getting here, catering, bad-weather plan — and reuse them everywhere. Each info block has a heading, rich text, and audience flags that decide who sees it: the public website and app, artists, venue coordinators, volunteers, or internal-only. A festival-wide block can be overridden for a specific edition or venue, so a stage with its own parking note shows that instead of the default — without retyping the rest.

Budget tracking¶

A lightweight budget on each edition, so you can see where you stand without a separate spreadsheet.

Artist budget — set a planned total; Festinato sums the fees, expenses and commission of every booked act and shows spend, the remaining balance, and a percentage bar.
Fundraising target — set what you aim to raise; confirmed sponsor and foundation amounts roll up against it, with pending pledges and the remaining gap shown alongside.

Dashboard¶

A read-at-a-glance overview of the current edition: artist count, slot coverage (assigned vs. open), volunteer-shift coverage, the artist budget bar, and your most-bookmarked acts — each a click away from the underlying list.

Royalty reporting (SUISA)¶

For Swiss festivals, collect a signed Programm Live repertoire declaration from every act, approve it, and export a filing-ready PDF bundle for SUISA — no paper, no chasing setlists by email. The artist fills in or uploads and signs the form from their portal; you approve it from the back-office. Off by default; enable it per festival. See SUISA list.

Multi-language¶

The back-office and the mobile app ship in German, French, Italian and English; additional languages can be activated under Settings → Translations → Languages. Translations are added directly on each record, so an artist's bio can be different in Swiss German and English.

Custom domain (Professional and above)¶

Use your own domain for the app and portal — app.example-festival.ch instead of example-festival.festinato.app. See Configuration → Custom domain.