An artist who applies to forty festivals scattered across a continent and gets six will spend most of the season and most of the money travelling between them. An artist who applies to twenty that cluster, and gets six, works a season.
The clusters are not obvious from a list sorted alphabetically. They show up when you sort by place and date.
Carinthia, first half of August
Velden, Klagenfurt and Villach sit within an hour of each other in southern Austria, and their dates fall within a fortnight. Three engagements, one drive, one region. Add Linz in mid-July and Innsbruck at the end of August and Austria alone carries six weeks.
Sardinia, summer
Four busker festivals on one island — Gallura in the north, Castelsardo on the coast, Iglesias and Pula in the south. Treat them as a single application effort and a single boat crossing rather than four separate decisions.
Switzerland, May to June
St.Gallen in early May, Merano just over the Italian border in mid-June, Chur the same week, Sion in early June. The Swiss season starts before the rest of Europe wakes up, which makes it useful rather than competitive with August.
Canada, July into August
Halifax, Toronto, Waterloo, Kingston, Ottawa and Edmonton run within a few weeks of each other, most pay a fee on top of the hat, and several contribute to travel. It is the best-organised busker circuit in the world and it collides directly with the European high season, which means it is an either-or rather than an also.
The southern hemisphere fills the gap
Christchurch's World Buskers Festival runs in January, when Europe is closed. So does the Gulf circuit — Sharjah, Dubai, Doha, Manama — which books through event agencies rather than festivals and pays considerably better than the hat.
Watch the collisions
August is where European street festivals pile up, and the second week is the worst of it. Buskers Bern, Neuchâtel and Lenzburg all fall within days of each other. You cannot take all three, so the question is not which to apply to but which to confirm — and confirming two and cancelling one is the most expensive mistake available on a circuit this small, where the organisers all know each other.