Event - Geek Village Summerfest & Elftopia (2025)

Starting a review with some words of praise seems right.

Thank you Elftopia for installing huge umbrellas at the food area so people could eat without getting scorched by the sun (and guess what; if it rains, those same umbrellas also protect cosplays and cameras). 
Thank you Elftopia for lowering the price of water during the ongoing heatwave. 
Thank you Elftopia for making sure there was plenty to see, and to do, other than posing/shooting for photographers/cosplayers, or having a chat with friends, followers & acquintances. 
Thank you Elftopia for an efficient, and well-controlled parking system. 
Thank you Elftopia for not selling every shot of mead at 7€. 
Thank you Elftopia for making the potato field behind the pink chapel finally accessable to diabled persons, and no longer a hazard for ankles.
Thank you Elftopia for listening to the complaints of the visitors over the years and making adjustments where possible. 

In a perfect world, I would have actually had the opportunity to say all those.. instead of having to rely on irony to make a point.. or rather: points.

Let's simply forget the Elftopia-experience and look at Geek Village Summerfest, because eventhough it was a 1st edition ànd the crowds still need to discover it's existence, they've learned loads from the errors Elftopia made.

But 1st some useful links:

▷ All photos can always be found on/downloaded from my Flickr and here!
▷ A "How to download stills from Flickr" tutorial was posted here.
▷ Some highlights might go to Instagram, Threads or Bluesky.
▷ A video might go to Clapper & to Tiktok
▷ Buy Red Cathedral a whisky on Ko-Fi
▷ Updates are on THE Facebook.
▷ Give a follow to this young creative foundation: Deep Red Noise vzw/asbl 

Or rather: give a follow & like everywhere.

Geek Village Summerfest gallery (Click on the arrows on the side to scroll):  

Update: 40% of all stills are processed & uploaded #patience

Yes, patience because +3000 stills have been shot at Geek Village (and I only want to edit 20% of those), yet at the same time I'm still editing on some stills from Elftopia & a spaghetti western shoot, a lot from the Antwerp Pride and editing short form videos for the Cosplay & LGBTQIA+ project of Deep Red Noise. 
No, I'm not working chronologically while editing, and even if there are 2-3 stills of a cosplayer in the final selection, I always try to get 1 of those ready leave the others till 1 from each and every cosplayer has been processed + uploaded. "More might follow", is the correct phrase.
If you get bored from waiting, you can always check some stills from the 2024 Winter Geek Village, or check out my personal faves amongst my recent cosplay photos, only very few will enjoy the style.. but just imagine you're one of those weird few.

The good, the bad & the ugly of the very first Geek Village Summerfest:

⧍ Evidently on top: they gave us the opportunity to put all cosplayers & visitors on the Red360 videobooth for free. A big thanks to all who came to make a video! A huge thanks to all who offered food or drinks. Those who offered a 1€ donation: it's being used to feed stray cats in Limburg. Obrigado.
⧍ The musical line-up was on fire. I already saw SeeD at Castlefest 2 week earlier and they're pure class. Prima Nocta is ALWAYS a huge party. Real-live hobbit Elvya had been absent for far too long. Alas I dindn't get to enjoy the others due to working in our booth and being dead-beat tired afterwards.
▷ Eventhough it was a good idea to program top-knotch bands at 20h or 21h, the festival is still too young to attract the masses of the correct age, to fill the huge dancing area in front of the main stage till late in the evening. It needs to grow first and become reknown for good evening concerts and then they might rival even Castlefest.
⧍ There's just so much happening all the time. Animations & activities inside Thor Central and outside on the surrounding grounds. And let's be honest: those pirates were pure fire with their shows and parades.
▷ At the same time, there was a genre-divide between inside and outside (fantasy fair outside and comic con inside), and it was huge to see all. 3 Labyrinthic floors + a cellar inside the gorgeous Thor Central-building. Another entire building, solely for shoots in between century-old machines. An entire steampunk village as an outside welcome. A hidden viking village. Some shopping tunnels hidden behind other buildings. A workshop meadow only very few visitors actually found.  

Elftopia Gallery (Click on the arrows on the side to scroll): 

Update: 100% of all stills are processed & uploaded #thankyouforthepatience

Let's continue with the Geek Village review.

⧍ The city of Genk had opened an old machine building to make cosplay pictures and it's a magical place. Big thanks and please do it again.
▼ Apparently not many cosplayers knew of this shooting opportunity. There was a time-slot system that wasn't really respected. It wasn't well indicated where/what/when.. #addarrows And it was rumoured some cosplayers were even discouraged to enter, or to venture further into the building. Luckily it had someone on the outside to catch me some unsuspecting cosplayers.
⧍ Food- & drink tokens cost 1€ (at last an event that makes it easy to count)  what makes a soft drink 3€ and a gyros wrap 7€. However: due to the heat, the water price was lowered to 1€.
⧍ After the concerts there were open air cinema screenings. An excellent idea, but again: it needs to grow in order to reach an audience that stays this late.  
⧍ Plenty of toilets.
▼ Not all toilets were kept clean with the same enthousiam.
⧍ Did I mention that you could get a 360 video for free at this fair? #alwayssurprisedtofindthevideosonsocials
⧍ A good, friendly and ecclectic mix of local + international vendors & artisans. Much better than the average comic con, less exotic & fringe than some genre events like Uchronicité or Vapeurs et contes de Fées.
▼ It needs more visitors to fill the enormous compound from morning till late in the evening.. Castlefest-style.
⧍ The (voice) actors & authors were mostly  local talent. Good choice and nice people. Same goes for the cosplay-stars they had invited.

+++ PLACEHOLDER INSTAGRAM POST +++

⧍ Saw some absolute Wow cosplays, and saw absolute fun cosplays.. and saw mostly cosplayers having fun in their costumes.
⧍ Bought mead.. both fun-to-drink-with-friends-on-a-renfaire-mead and very special home brew mead. It's good to have both, because they both have their place. However.. my collection of renfaire drinks is starting to rival my whisky collection.
⧍ Got helped several times by security, by the parking indicators and by the other crew. They all did a swell job.
▷ Sadly enough even after 3 days of festival, I still don't know what went on at the big swimming pool.. the mermaid had her own transparant swimming pool.. so it can't be for her.. so WHAT? Please, tell me.. because I wanted to swim.

IF Geek Village can keep up this level of entertainment & quality for a few more years, so the masses of cosplayers, larpers, geeks, fantasy creatures might learn of their existance, they might become the most important of the Belgian Summer geek events, eclipsing by far the current reigning renfair queen: Elftopia.

A direct link to this article:  https://tinyurl.com/GeekVillageSummer2025

Since everybody downloaded their 360 video to their cellphones directly in the booth, normally all should be okay. If there's a problem, the videos remain in the cloud till September 10, so give a howl before that date.

Namaste and till somewhere, sometime, somehow.