The southern Dutch city of Tilburg is seeing more colour than usual this weekend, as thousands of red-haired women from around the world converge in the Netherlands for a festival held once a year to celebrate their fiery locks.

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The 2025 edition of the Redhead Days festival includes music, food trucks and workshops tailored to the special needs of redheads, from makeup to skin cancer prevention.

Organisers expect the three-day event to draw thousands of people from around 80 countries.

Elonda Bakker, who has been attending the Dutch festival for 15 years, played cards with a group of red-haired friends from around the world who gather at the festival each year.

“I came here mainly out of curiosity, to see what it would be like not to stand out in the crowd,” said Bakker, 29. “It was a really interesting first experience and I come here again and again because I made some really good friends here.”

Magician Daniel Hank traveled six hours from Germany to attend the festival, and now takes pride in showing off his hair, which he was bullied for as a child.

“I think I’m pretty easy to recognize because there aren’t too many people with red beards, there aren’t too many people with long red hair,” he said.

The festival is free and open to all, except for the group photo on Sunday. That event is only for women with “natural” red hair.

The 2013 edition set a Guinness World Record for “largest gathering of people with natural red hair,” with 1,672 people posing for a group photo.

The tradition began two decades ago when Dutch artist Bart Rouwenhorst posted a post in a local newspaper looking for 15 red-haired models for his art project. He received ten times more response than he expected and assembled the group for a photo.

The project gained so much attention that Rouwenhorst organized a similar gathering the following year and continues to oversee the festival, now a multi-day event.

“The festival is really wonderful because everyone gets along with each other and feels like a family,” he said.