We love our obscure celebrations in the United States. Often, these are local events of much note, and we’ve gathered a bunch of them for you on a map.

Yet the 182 festivals that take place each year across the U.S. aren’t very easily defined. Not to stop us from trying to put them into categories or types. These range from arts and crafts festivals to transportation festivals. The two most common festival types include 64 individual events across the country—and there are some pretty spectacular individual events within each type (Sawdust Art Festival, anyone?), as you’ll see on the map below.

View U.S. Festivals in a full screen map

The Two Most Common Festival Types

By far, the two most popular kinds are 1. food, harvest, and wild game and 2. culture, heritage, and folk festivals. While certainly not exhaustive, Wikipedia reports that 32 celebrations in the U.S. fall into each of these two categories, so let’s take a look at some individual examples of these festival types.

Food, Harvest, and Wild Game Festivals

The food, harvest, and wild game festival type is pretty self-explanatory. Six such events occur each year in Ohio:

• Banana Split Festival (Wilmington, Ohio)
• Pumpkin Festival (Barnesville)
• Pumpkin Show (Circleville)
• Festival of the Fish (Vermilion)
• County Apple Festival (Jackson)
• Sweet Corn Festival (Fairborn)

Ohio certainly loves its pumpkins—though it’s not the only state with pumpkin-themed events. California’s Half Moon Bay hosts a Half Moon Bay Art and Pumpkin Festival, along with two more events that fall into the food, harvest, and wild game festival category. The Morton Pumpkin Festival also happens each year in Illinois, in addition to another festival of this type. As for where the largest pumpkins of all time are grown, check out our post on the topic.

On the same note, five food, harvest, and wild game festivals take place in North Carolina while two are held in Louisiana, Texas, and New York, including two in the same city: the National Buffalo Wing Festival and Taste of Buffalo, which we assume involves either multiple cuisines prominent in the city or the animal.

Festivals of Culture, Heritage, and Folk

As for the other most common type of festival, Texas is home to the most culture, heritage, and folk festivals (four). Borderfest is the largest and oldest music festival in South Texas, held each year in the Rio Grande Valley.

Meanwhile, Dallas hosts two festivals of this type: a Greek Food Festival and the North Texas Irish Festival. Dallas’s Irish Festival may be the second oldest Irish festival in the country, but it’s far from the only one held in the U.S. There’s also the Riverfront Irish Festival in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio and the Dublin Irish Festival—also in the Buckeye State. Plus, the capital of Indiana throws an Indy Irish Festival while the Kansas City Irish Fest takes place in Kansas City, Missouri.

Last for Texas is the Texas Folklife Festival, which comes around each year in San Antonio.

To see Ohio’s third festival that doesn’t fall into this category, click through the map. Otherwise, we’re moving on to the rest of the festival types.

How to Analyze the Other 19 U.S. Festival Types

You know about the two most common festival types in the U.S. But with 182 total festivals, food, harvest, and wild game festivals and culture, heritage, and folk festivals certainly aren’t the only types.

Festival type	No. of festivals
Food, harvest and wild game festivals	32
Culture, heritage and folk festivals	32
Fine art and theatre festivals	21
Arts and crafts festivals	17
Flower festivals	11
Celebration/talk festivity	10
Alternative festivals	10
LGBT festivals	9
Seasonal festivals	7
Contemporary Christian Festivals	5
Holiday festivals	4
Storytelling festivals	3
Rodeo and horse racing festivals	3
Religious festivals	3
Pioneer festivals	3
Pagan festivals	3
Beer festivals	3
Sports festivals	2
Science festivals	2
Transportation festivals	1
Innovation festivals	1

Tables like the one above are great for displaying your data. But when you want to analyze the same information, there are far better tools, including those that map your data.

Many mapping software options enable you to plot your points, such as ArcGIS and other desktop GIS software, Google Maps API, and web-based mapping tools.

But fewer offer the ability to group your data. When you map your data, you typically have more information than just location. This is why BatchGeo enables you and other users of your map to select only the markers that meet certain requirements, filtering out the rest. Groups can be combined to zero in on very specific results, giving you insight into the story behind the map.

Get started for free at batchgeo.com.

Flip open your Guinness Book of World Records… or just visit the site. There are world records for anything from anamorphic prints to YouTube views—including the highest-attended concerts.

While a French artist started the Guinness Book entry with a 1979 concert, it has since been surpassed… though, amazingly, the same artist still ties for the title thanks to an even bigger performance.

The 48 concerts on the map have had 100,000 people or more attend. For context, the highest-attended Super Bowl ever saw 103,985 football fans in the stands. Yet even the lowest of these concerts had nearly identical numbers, with some even holding over 33 times that amount.

So let’s stage dive into the world’s 10 highest-attended concerts, the artists who have played multiple 100,000+ concerts, and the most common years for these record-breaking events.

View Highest-Attended Concerts in a full screen map

The World’s 10 Highest-Attended Concerts Were Free for Millions

Altogether, the 10 largest concerts ever performed entertained 20.5 million people. That could have included you and millions of your closest friends for free. Yes, all of the largest concerts ever cost nothing to attend, as you’ll see in the table below.

Artist	Title or event	Venue	City	Attendance	Year
Rod Stewart	New Year’s Eve	Copacabana Beach	Rio de Janeiro	3,500,000	1994
Jean-Michel Jarre	The 850th Anniversary of Moscow	State University of Moscow	Moscow	3,500,000	1997
Jorge Ben Jor	New Year’s Eve	Copacabana Beach	Rio de Janeiro	3,000,000	1993
Jean-Michel Jarre	Bastille Day	La Défense	Paris	2,500,000	1990
AC/DC, Pantera, Metallica, The Black Crowes, E.S.T.	Monsters of Rock	Tushino Airfield	Moscow	1,600,000	1991
Various artists	Live 8	Philadelphia Museum of Art	Philadelphia	1,500,000	2005
The Rolling Stones	A Bigger Bang	Copacabana Beach	Rio de Janeiro	1,500,000	2006
Jean-Michel Jarre	Rendez-vous Houston	Downtown Houston	Houston	1,300,000	1986
Various artists	Paz Sin Fronteras II	Plaza de la Revolución	Havana	1,100,000	2009
Jean-Michel Jarre	Bastille Day	Place de la Concorde	Paris	1,000,000	1979

While free concerts can complicate direct comparisons to the rest of the map’s ticketed, single-artist concerts, their attendances are still notable, especially the four headlined by the same artist: Jean-Michel Jarre. The French composer, performer, and record producer is known for his outdoor performances featuring his music (electronic, ambient, and new-age) paired with laser displays, projections, and fireworks.

Jarre first broke attendance records in 1979 at his Bastille Day show at Place de la Concorde in Paris. In 1986, he again bested previous attendance highs when 1,300,000 people attended his Rendez-vous Houston. He did so again in Paris in 1990 with 2,500,000 attending Bastille Day. Finally, his 1997 The 850th Anniversary of Moscow remains tied for the #1 highest-attended concert ever held to this day.

Additionally, two more of the highest-attended concerts were held at the same venue, for the same event during subsequent years: New Year’s Eve at Copacabana Beach. Brazilian singer Jorge Ben Jor played for 3,000,000 fans in Rio de Janeiro on December 31st, 1993 while British rocker Rod Stewart brought his Hot Legs to the same stage the following year when 3,500,000 showed up. It just goes to show that NYE isn’t only popular in the U.S., though the country is certainly known for its variety of ball drops, like an 80-pound decorated cheese wedge or 100-pound stick of bologna.

To see only the most highly attended ticketed single-artist concerts, select the “Type” group on the map and filter by “Single-artist concerts.” Now let’s take a look at more artists like Jarre who have performed for high numbers numerous times.

8 Artists Have Played Multiple 100,000+ Concerts

French artist Jean-Michel Jarre is tied with Rod Stewart for the #1 spot. But Jarre differs in that he has also played three shows with almost-as-many attendees. Stewart only had the one. Along with Jarre, other artists appear on the map more than once. In fact, eight such artists have headlined at least two of the 48 highly-attended concerts on the map.

• Jean-Michel Jarre: 4 concerts attended by 100,000+
• Michael Jackson: 3
• Queen: 3
• Robbie Williams: 3
• The Rolling Stones: 3
• Madonna: 2
• Oasis: 2
• Vasco Rossi: 2

Of course, all four of Jean-Michel Jarre’s best-attended concerts were free, as was The Rolling Stones’ A Bigger Bang show at Copacabana Beach.

Meanwhile, all three of Queen, Michael Jackson, and Robbie Williams’ highest-attended shows were ticketed, single-artist events. Queen’s 1981 The Game Tour at Estádio do Morumbi saw 131,000 attendees.

Similar numbers (125,000) were reported at two of Michael Jackson’s concerts and all three of Robbie Williams’, though Williams’ were subsequent days of the same tour at the same venue, which you can see on the map.

When Major Concerts Were Popular

We’ve answered the who and what of these major events—now it’s time for the when. While the dates of some of these shows have already been mentioned throughout this post, you can see which years most of these huge events were held when you use the map filtering and grouping feature.

For example, group by “Year” and you’ll see various ranges. Here we’ve plotted these large concerts by decade:

This style of concert clearly peaked in the 1980s and 90s, though the 2020s have already nearly caught up to the decade prior. Perhaps there’s a comeback?

What a simple column chart doesn’t show is where the concerts were popular during each decade. You’ll be able to see this visually on the map as you use the grouping options to filter which markers are displayed.

You could do the same with month—July in Europe looks pretty popular! You can scroll back to the top of this post and explore the map or view the larger version.

While it’s fun to imagine Mick Jagger, Freddie Mercury, and other artists strutting across these mammoth stages, you might prefer to visualize your own data on a map. All you need is a spreadsheet of locations, such as customers or other points of interest. And you can make your first custom map for free.

At the national level, governmental officials must manage a country’s economic, political, and social situations, among many other things. Further complicating their work is potential corruption, which can be defined in a multitude of ways. The non-governmental organization Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) defines corruption as “abuse of entrusted power for private gain.”

The index, which has been published each year since 1995, ranks countries around the world by perceived corruption in the public sector. Many countries rank low in corruption, including Denmark, New Zealand, and Finland. However, many more are riddled with corrupt politicians according to the CPI, such as South Sudan, Syria, and Somalia as you can find on the map below.

View Countries by corruption in a full screen map

The Most Corrupt Countries in Africa and Asia

The Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) scores and ranks countries by their perceived levels of government corruption. A score of 0 indicates the most corrupt country, while a CPI of 99 means little corruption.

The 123 countries that scored between 0 and 49 in 2021 are therefore perceived as more corrupt. Yet while a score of 49 isn’t something to be proud of, it’s nothing compared to some of the absolute lowest-rated countries that you’ll see on the table below or when you group the map by the lowest 2021 Scores (“17 – 11” and “28 – 19”).

Nation or Territory	2021 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI)
South Sudan	11
Somalia	13
Syria	13
Venezuela	14
Afghanistan	16
North Korea	16
Yemen	16
Equatorial Guinea	17
Libya	17
Burundi	19
Turkmenistan	19

The table above shows the 11 most corrupt countries, according to the CPI. Of these, South Sudan is the worst. In 2012, it was reported that South Sudanese politicians had stolen $4 billion in government funds since the advent of self-rule in 2005. That said, South Sudan is hardly the only African country worth calling out. Somalia, Equatorial Guinea, Libya, and Burundi also rank high in corruption.

The rest of the table consists of mostly Asian countries, with Syria being the most corrupt of these. Syria is followed by Afghanistan, North Korea, Yemen, and Turkmenistan on the CPI. This leaves Venezuela, the only South American country to make the list.

But of course, the world’s not all corrupt, thanks to those on the other end of the spectrum.

10 of the Least Corrupt Nordic Countries

South Sudan, Syria, and 121 other countries may have had CPIs of 0-49 in 2021 but there are 56 countries in the 50-99 range. Though there are far fewer of these non-corrupt countries, you can see the top of these on the list below.

• Denmark (88) CPI
• New Zealand (88)
• Finland (88)
• Singapore (85)
• Sweden (85)
• Norway (85)
• Switzerland (84)
• Netherlands (82)
• Luxembourg (81)
• Germany (80)

Including Denmark and Finland, 40% of the 10 least corrupt countries in the world are Nordic. Sweden and Norway are the other two Nordic countries with the same high CPI score (85 for both).

Expanding to continents, 8 out of 10 are in Europe. The Nordic countries are included in this, all four ranking higher than any of the other European countries in the top 10: Switzerland, Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Germany.

Meanwhile, New Zealand and Singapore round out the top 10 in Oceania and Asia, respectively. Singapore’s inclusion is perhaps the most notable, considering many of the most corrupt countries we discussed in the previous section were located on the same continent.

If you’re wondering where the U.S. falls, it has a CPI of 67, which, interestingly enough, is a six-point fall from 2012. Let’s dive more into these changes next.

View Changes in Chart Form

As for changes through the years, you can sort the map by “10-Year Change: 2012-2021.” But it’s one thing to look at a snapshot—and another to see how it changed: all at once or gradually.

This is where charts come in handy, which we created using our inline charts tutorial. Now let’s take a look at the largest changes.

Seychelles, a collection of over 100 islands in the Indian Ocean, has the largest positive change (and largest overall change). In 2012, it had a CPI of 52, just narrowly missing the cutoff for corrupt countries. In 2021, Seychelles has a score of 70, ranking among the top X best. The largest change year-to-year was in 2017, as noted in its inline chart.

Meanwhile, the largest negative change belongs to Saint Lucia. Back in 2012, the island nation‘s CPI was 71. Throughout the years (and especially in 2017 when it dropped by five), it has fallen by 15, now standing at 56.

For detailed instructions on adding inline charts to your maps, check out our post about it. You can also see the charts in action in Where U.S. Beer is Brewed.