Three weeks from now thousands of Pirate Bay supporters will gather in a festival area located a few kilometers north of Stockholm. At least, if the organizers can get them to pay for a ticket. The Pirate team needs the public to chip in, and they hope to raise 450,000 Swedish kronor ($68,000) through a crowd-funding campaign. The local Pirate Party is in charge of the event and promises visitors live music, food, alcohol and plenty of opportunities to share.

Hollywood hoped that it would never happen, but this year The Pirate Bay celebrates its 10th anniversary.

The site was founded in 2003 by Swedish pro-culture organization Piratbyrån (The Bureau of Piracy). The idea was to create the first public file-sharing network in Sweden, but the site soon turned into a global file-sharing icon.

Nearly a year ago The Pirate Bay asked the public to organize parties all around the world in celebration of the upcoming anniversary, and the Pirate Party took it upon itself to organize something big.

“The Stockholm Pirate Party thought that we, at least, needed to do something. When you think of it, the Pirate Bay has played an important role in the history of all Pirate parties. The Pirate Bay really deserves an epic party,” Pirate Party’s Erik Lönroth tells TorrentFreak.

Up until a few weeks ago there were no concrete plans on where to host the event, but with the August 10 date looming, the party organizers eventually picked a festival location a few kilometers north of the Swedish capitol Stockholm.

The Wikparken area will host several stages for artists and DJs, who can still apply to perform, and enough room for thousands of Pirate Bay aficionados to relax, eat and drink all day long.

“The place we have now will be great with as few as 2,000 people, and that’s the number we expect to come. But we have a setup that quickly can scale up to as many as 10,000 people before we need to start getting creative about it,” Lönroth says.

“The most important part is how to get all beers and music events organized so that everyone will be able to enjoy as much as possible.”

The Festival area

The challenge now is to actually get all these thousands of people to come, and pay for a ticket. The Pirate Bay is not picking up the entire bill for the event so users will have to buy a ticket to enter the birthday party. The cheapest “poor man” tickets cost 100 Swedish kronor, which is about $15.

About a week ago the festival organizers launched a “crowdfunding” campaign where people can buy tickets, travel and dinner arrangements. Thus far, just 30 people have chipped in totaling 38,730 Swedish Kronor, less than 10% of the 450,000 ($68,000) goal.

The current numbers are on the low side, but Lönroth hopes that this will pick up soon so that the party can actually take place.

“Crowd-funding is an interesting concept on how to finance culture events generally. If it’s a good idea or not in this case will remain to be seen but we hope that the public would like to see this party come alive. Its always a risk doing stuff. Half measures avail us nothing.”

There sure is enough potential interest for the festival. On Facebook more than 36,000 people have been invited and thus far over 24,000 have “confirmed” that they’re going. However, that was before people knew that they had to buy a ticket.

The organizers are confident that the festival will turn out to be a massive success and are working hard to arrange everything on time. Several bands and DJs have already been booked, and there are some secret events in the pipeline as well.

“The highlights will probably be all the live music bands booked for the day. Currently, we have eight bands playing on three different stages all day and DJs in the evening. We will add more as we go and you can expect a few secret events we haven’t revealed yet,” Lönroth says.

“I hope this will be the kind of event you remember for the rest of your life just to have been there,” he adds.

People who are interested in taking part in the festivities can head over to the crowdfunding page to secure a ticket and follow the latest updates.

Those who can’t join will have the option to watch the festival via several live feeds, and afterwards lots of video and other content will be shared via The Pirate Bay.