Lake of Stars Festival is an annual three-day international festival held on the shores of Lake Malawi, the third largest fresh water lake in Africa.
The first festival took place in 2004 and attracts over 4,000 attendees with musical acts drawn mainly from Africa and Europe.
The festival was founded by British tourist Will Jameson when he visited the country in 1998 and was a student at John Moores University and took a year off to work with The Wildlife Society.
Upon returning to college, Jameson started night club as tribute to his trip, called Chibuku Shake Shake, the name of a brand of Malawian beer.
The club night was named the best club night in the United Kingdom 2004 by Mixmag. That same year, Jameson held the first festival in which nearly 700 people attended, the majority from Africa.
In 2011, Lake of Stars attracted over 3,000 attendees from Europe and Africa and the festival was opened with the Malawian Ministry of Tourism skydiving onto the festival beach.
Lake of Stars Festival is widely referenced as being one of the most important festivals on the African continent.
In 2014, it was named one of the top seven African music festivals to attend by CNN and other media recognitions from BBC and Guardian Angel.
In 2015, Time out named Lake of Stars as having the most beautiful festival location in the world.
In 2007 the Ministry of Tourism made a directive that enabled Lake of Stars to organise events in various regions of the lake so that a lot of people benefit to benefit from the festival.
The project has exposed over 600 million people to Malawi through its media coverage and it continues to contribute to the development of tourism and the arts in Malawi since 2003 and is estimated to have generated over $4.7 million in Malawi.
This is the 20th year of the Lake of Stars project and so far, 12 festivals have been produced and over 100 events in the UK and Africa since the starting of the project in 2003.
The last event was held in 2018 and this year the event returns for a 20th anniversary to be held on 6 to 8 September at Fish Eagle Bay in Nkhotakota.
This year’s event is dubbed Lake of Stars Reactivated, resurfacing after four years break, 20 years of existence and 60 years of Malawi’s independence.
Headliners include Amapiano star Zeze Kingston and Temwa, Emmie Deebo and Dj Chmba as its culture of rotating local and international artists.
Apart from music there will be activities like poetry, theater, workshop, fashion just to mention a few.
