Five days, hundreds of smiles and one very special birthday celebration. Freddie Days 2026 gave us memories we will not forget anytime soon. From quizzes and tattoos to our photography pop-up, White Glove Experience and Freddie’s birthday cake, Montreux once again showed us what makes this community so special.
Five days full of Freddie
This year, Freddie Days felt extra special. Fans from all over the world came to Montreux to celebrate Freddie’s 80th birthday and 30 years since his statue was unveiled on the waterfront. The whole town was full of music, stories, laughter and people who had travelled from near and far for the same reason.
World of Freddie was there with a full programme of activities, and you definitely kept us busy.
Our Quiz Challenge quickly became one of your favourites, and we really hope you left knowing a few new Freddie facts. Someone even stole one of our quiz cards, so wherever you are, we hope you are enjoying your very exclusive souvenir from Freddie Days.
Our 360° Photo Booth was another place where we spent a lot of time watching people smile, pose and create videos together. Some took it very seriously. Others absolutely did not. Both approaches worked perfectly.
And then there were the tattoos. We expected people to like them, but we did not expect the queues. So many of you came for a Freddie-inspired tattoo that we eventually lost count of how many we did. We are also still finding glitter everywhere, so we may have brought a little piece of Freddie Days home with us whether we wanted to or not.
Who knows Freddie best?
We also put your Freddie knowledge to the test with our Kahoot quiz. And some of you knew a lot.
Lady D took the win and left with a bottle of wine, but after checking the results twice, we were impressed by just how strong the competition was. The Freddie knowledge in the room was on another level.
Maybe next time we will have to make the questions even harder.
Two photographers, two perspectives and one very special Freddie artefact
One of our main stops during Freddie Days was the photography pop-up exhibition: Queen and Freddie Mercury: Two Photographers, Two Perspectives. The exhibition brought together two very different ways of seeing Queen and Freddie. Denis O’Regan photographed the band from the inside as an official tour photographer, while Ben Perea captured them from the audience. Seeing both perspectives side by side made the exhibition feel very personal, and we loved watching visitors stop, look at the details and discover moments they may never have seen before.
The exhibition was also home to our daily White Glove Experience, which gave visitors the chance to get even closer to Freddie’s story. Every day, guests could see an original stage-worn sweatband up close and even touch it. It was the artefact they could touch, making the moment feel especially real. You could slow down, look closely and spend a little time with a genuine piece of Freddie’s history.
The sweetest moments of Freddie Days
Of course, some of the biggest highlights came on Freddie’s 80th birthday. We brought our own special birthday cake to Montreux as a gift for Freddie, and it quickly became one of the most photographed parts of our World of Freddie activities.
But later, another very special cake became part of the official birthday celebration. When it was time to cut it on stage, Freddie’s sister Kashmira Bulsara and his nephew Samuel Bulsara joined the celebrations.
That was one of the biggest surprises of the whole event, and we were incredibly happy to be there for it. Seeing Freddie’s family on stage while fans from around the world celebrated his 80th birthday made the evening feel even more special.
Apparently, we became celebrities too
There was one more thing we were not completely prepared for: you started asking us for autographs.
Suddenly, we were signing books, taking photos and leaving little messages everywhere. For a few days, we almost felt like celebrities ourselves.
Most importantly, Montreux was also the first place where we introduced our new World of Freddie book.
The book was created in collaboration with the House of Music Hungary, and seeing the first copies in your hands made the launch even more special. It is now available at Freddie – The Exhibition in Budapest and will soon also be available through our World of Freddie online shop.
Montreux, see you next time
Looking back, Freddie Days 2026 was one of those experiences that is difficult to sum up in just a few words. There were long days, tired feet, disappearing voices and probably enough glitter to last us until next year. But there were also hundreds of conversations, smiles, photos, stories and moments that reminded us why this community means so much to us.
Thank you to everyone who visited our activities, joined the quiz, took a video, got a tattoo, visited the photography exhibition, came to the White Glove Experience, bought our book or simply stopped by to say hello.
For those few days, Montreux did not feel like just another event. It felt like one enormous Freddie reunion.
And we already miss it.
Photo credit: Eduard Goričev
With World of Freddie, you get much closer — not only to the icon, but to the man behind it all.
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