Toyota Innibos 2025: A Festival of Festivals Bringing the Lowveld to Life

The Toyota Innibos Lowveld National Arts Festival once again affirmed in 2025 why it stands as one of South Africa’s largest and most beloved cultural highlights. It is not just a music festival, but a celebration of the full spectrum of arts and culture. From music, theatre and books to visual arts, stalls, and storytelling brought together over 78,000 attendees in total over 4 days.

With four entertainment stages, a main stage featuring the country’s most famous singers, top theatre productions, a boeke-krôl that sells out within minutes every year, and a wide array of food and art stalls, Innibos offers an experience few festivals can match. For the thousands of people who flock to Mbombela each year, this is truly the festival of festivals – an experience you can only really understand if you have been there yourself.

Festival loyalty remains remarkably strong, with 2025 seeing 25% of attendees having visited Innibos more than 10 times, the highest proportion ever recorded, and 24% of attendees who experienced Innibos for the first time. This truly reflects the festival’s enduring appeal to new markets and its loyal following.

Innibos’s strength lies not only in its varied programme, but also in the way it brings people together from across the country. This year, 48% of attendees came from Mpumalanga, with Gauteng contributing 37%. While these two provinces remain the backbone of the visitor profile, Limpopo, North West, and KwaZulu-Natal also made a notable contribution, and the festival even welcomed international visitors from Botswana, Mozambique, and further abroad. This underscores Innibos’s role as both a national and cross-border event that celebrates cultural diversity.

The North-West University Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences conduct an annual independent study of Innibos’s impact. The project is managed by Prof Pierre-André Viviers, Prof Martinette Kruger, Prof Andrea Saayman, leading the economic significance analysis, and Prof Adam Viljoen. The study forms part of the Tourism Research in Economics, Environs and Society (TREES) unit, a hub of innovative and impactful tourism research for over two decades.

The 2025 results on preferred genres revealed significant shifts in audience interests. Music emerged as the clear favourite, chosen by 51% of respondents, up strongly from 44% in 2024. Comedy also gained popularity, growing from 20% in 2024 to 23% in 2025, showing sustained demand for light-hearted entertainment. Drama, however, experienced a decline, largely because the programme included fewer productions in this genre. Other categories, such as classical music, visual arts, literature and lifestyle gained popularity this year. This broader breakdown provides a richer understanding of attendees’ interests, allowing for greater variety in programming, cross-genre opportunities, and targeted marketing for the future.

On a linguistic level, Innibos reflects a picture of growing diversity. Afrikaans remains the dominant home language, representing 87% of respondents in 2025 – up slightly from 84% in 2024, but lower than in earlier years. English accounted for 10% of attendees, while 3% fell into the “Other” category, which included isiZulu, Sepedi, and siSwati. This expansion of the linguistic base shows that Innibos continues to serve its strong Afrikaans-speaking core, while also steadily attracting audiences from other languages and cultures.

According to Festival Manager Andy Lubbe, Innibos is an inclusive festival that stretches beyond cultural and ethnic boundaries. “It’s a celebration of what we can offer as a whole, to everyone interested, and we welcome and encourage people from all walks of life to enjoy Innibos. What we saw in 2025 is how the festival’s diversity, whether in music genres, languages, or cultural offerings, is drawing new audiences and broadening its impact. That means greater inclusivity, thousands of new job opportunities, and greater economic value for the region.”

In terms of economic impact, Innibos 2025 reached an impressive milestone. Adjusted visitor spending was estimated at R53.8 million, a significant increase compared to R35.2 million in 2024. Organiser spending that remained within the local economy amounted to about R13.2 million. The festival’s total contribution to the local economy is between R80 million and R100.5 million. The effects were clearly visible in bustling restaurants, fully booked guesthouses, and the many entrepreneurs and workers who benefit from the opportunities created each year. The festival’s growth not only boosts local businesses but also directly supports employment by creating thousands of new jobs across multiple sectors during its run. The festival created 786 job opportunities in the creative and ancillary industries and more than 1,000 additional temporary job opportunities.

Visitor feedback further highlights why Innibos continues to grow year after year. Most festivalgoers strongly agreed that the festival instils pride in their cultural heritage, fosters entrepreneurship and job creation, and positions Mbombela as a leading tourism destination. Loyalty to the festival is remarkably strong. 95% of festival attendees confirmed that they will visit the festival again, recommend it to others, and speak positively about their experience. This reflects deep satisfaction and engagement, reinforcing Innibos’s standing as both a cultural highlight and a key tourism driver for the Lowveld.

Toyota Innibos 2025 was therefore not just a festival of music and entertainment, but a festival of people, culture, and community. It once again proved why it is the Lowveld’s greatest pride – an event that wins hearts, supports businesses, creates opportunities, and secures Mbombela’s place as one of South Africa’s most dynamic cultural cities.