The purpose of this paper is to examine how events can be successful and stay competitive.Festivals are a big part of the event world and it can be difficult to understand why certainfestivals are successful and others not. In this paper we have conducted a comparison betweentwo major festivals in Stockholm. Both of them reached success, but nevertheless one of themfailed, while the other one is still successful. With this comparison, it appeared that there aremany aspects that help a festival to reach success but also factors that can make a festival afailure. To conduct this study, a number of interviews have been carried through; these havelater been put in relation to different theories about festivals. The results of this study providesinsight into festivals ups and downs and why these happen, and can hopefully be a help toboth new and existing festivals to achieve good results.