The second round of the Open Festival-Competition of Rifle Song "Krasne Pole", gala concert and awarding ceremony to be held in Khust

The open festival-competition of rifle songs "Krasne Pole" is traditionally held in Khust. It was launched in March 2009 as part of the celebration of the 70th anniversary of Carpathian Ukraine.

This year, the auditions will be held on 15 March in the concert hall of the Khust School of Arts of the Khust City Council, and the gala concert and award ceremony will take place on 16 March at the Transcarpathian Regional Drama and Comedy Theatre.

The festival-competition has a deep meaning, because it was on 15 March 1939 in the city above the Tisza that the independent state of Carpathian Ukraine was proclaimed at a meeting of the Soym of Subcarpathian Rus. It did not last long, because the very next day it was occupied by Hortense Hungary. In a bloody battle with the regular Hungarian army, the defenders of Carpathian Ukraine, who fought against the enemy with rifles against artillery, were defeated. The Tisza River was stained with the blood of dozens of fallen Ukrainian soldiers.

By participating in the Krasne Pole festival-competition, groups and individual performers glorify the events associated with the proclamation of Carpathian Ukraine, as well as the victory of the fighters for Ukraine's independence in the following decades. It has a direct connection with the present, as after Russia's treacherous attack in February 2022, the defenders of the Fatherland have to defend Ukraine's freedom, independence and territorial integrity from invaders once again. The creative competition is held to promote songs with national and patriotic themes.

In the first (qualifying) round of the festival-competition "Krasne Pole", which took place online on 21 February 2025, was attended by 67 groups and soloists (10 choirs, 25 vocal ensembles, 5 quartets, 2 trios, 2 duets, 23 solo vocalists) from 15 regions of Ukraine (Volyn, Dnipro, Zakarpattia, Zaporizhzhia, Ivano-Frankivsk, Kyiv, Kirovohrad, Lviv, Poltava, Rivne, Sumy, Kherson, Khmelnytskyi, Chernivtsi, Chernihiv). More than 135 patriotic songs imbued with courage and heroism, sorrow and sadness, light and hope were performed. Some of them were riflemen's songs.

In the second (final) round, which will take place on 15 March at the Khust School of Arts, 30 groups and soloists from Volyn, Zakarpattia, Zaporizhzhia, Ivano-Frankivsk, Kyiv, Kirovohrad, Lviv, Poltava, Rivne, and Khmelnytskyi regions will compete.
The gala concert and awarding ceremony will be held in Khust on 16 March in the Transcarpathian Regional Drama and Comedy Theatre. The beginning is at 13.00.

The founders of the Open Festival-Competition of Rifle Song "Krasne Pole" are the Department of Culture of the Transcarpathian Regional State Administration and the Regional Military Administration.

The organisers of the festival-competition are the Regional Organisational and Methodological Centre of Culture of the Transcarpathian Regional Council and the Department of Culture, Youth and Sports of the Khust City Council.

The festival-competition is supported by the Transcarpathian Regional State Administration-Regional Military Administration, Khust City Council and with the support of the Transcarpathian Regional Drama and Comedy Theatre of the Transcarpathian Regional Council and the Khust School of Arts of the Khust City Council.
We sincerely invite you to the gala concert!