Dimensions is Croatia's most assured house and techno festival

Celebrating its fifth year in 2016, Dimensions Festival can rightly claim to be the leading festival of underground house and techno in Croatia. Depending on where you like to rave, the site is arguably also the best currently used by any event in the country – or even the world. The fort at Punta Christo is a spectacular location, with plenty of interesting features and performance areas, and close proximity to the beach. Located on a peninsula several kilometres outside of Pula, Istria, there are few neighbours to disturb, although festival goers staying in the city itself face a not cheap cab ride to the locale and those staying nearby pay premium rates to do so.

Local buses, private accommodation prices and the dusty ground (which is complained about in Mixmag's earshot by trainer wearers and those with more fragile respiratory systems) are out of the festival's control, but everything within its remit Dimensions gets absolutely right. The sound on site is fantastic at every stage. Even on boat parties the sound is sufficient (and that certainly can't be said of all festivals). The lighting and other installed elements range from the proficient to the impressive, the latter particularly on the larger stages. Staff are plentiful, helpful and courteous.
Perhaps the best thing about Dimensions though is the line-up and the programming. This lot really know music and they really know how a night should flow. Their ability to offer a perpetually cool line-up of well established names and fantastic, lesser known talent (including a wealth of Croatian DJs) is perhaps their best attribute.

There are a few uncomfortable shifts from DJ to DJ and line-up clashes occur purely because there's just too much good stuff to check out. It's difficult to take everything in, not only because the site is quite large and can be exhausting to traipse around day in, day out, but also because this festival is much more than a weekend affair. The opening concert happens on Wednesday and from then to the early hours of Monday there is good music to be heard (mostly on site, but also at some spectacularly located unofficial afterparties).

The crowd is largely British, but there are many Spanish, Italian, German and French speaking youths in the audience too. Best of all, Dimensions boasts a large percentage of Croatian festival goers and, in general, their helpfulness and local knowledge, should you seek it out, can greatly benefit your experience there.