ERR covered the festival from Thursday's opening performance of the XXI Dance Festival at Kalev Stadium to the final, festive notes of the main concert of the XXVIII Song Festival at the Tallinn Song Festival Grounds on Sunday night.

According to TV audience measurements by Kantar Emor, at least 483,000 viewers watched coverage of the events for 15 minutes or more, either live or on replay. The festival also attracted exceptional interest online, where full broadcasts were viewed  more than 100,000 times, and individual songs and dances posted separately drew thousands more views.

The third and final performance of the Dance Festival, the Folk Music Festival, the Song and Dance Festival Parade and both concerts of the Song Festival were all broadcast live on ETV, ETV2 and ETV+. Viewers could also tune in to all the major events on Vikerraadio, Klassikaraadio, Raadio 4, ERR's online portals and the streaming platform Jupiter.

According to live broadcast executive producer Margus Saar, ERR broadcast the Song and Dance Festival live for over 26 hours last week.

"The power of the Song and Dance Festival is immense," Saar said. "We experienced it in the rain and wind, and at various event venues — and we're also seeing [that power] in the viewer numbers. That is our mission — to bring the concerts and performances to homes in Estonia and abroad as a unified, artistic whole, rich with genuine emotion, as not everyone was able to attend in person."

Sunday's main Song Festival concert attracted the largest television audience. The nearly eight-hour broadcast was watched live or on reply on ETV, ETV2 and ETV+ by an average of 185,000 viewers, with ETV viewership peaking at 258,000 during the finale. The concert's online live stream drew another 45,000 visitors.

The opening concert of the Song Festival on Saturday was watched by an average of 171,000 people on ETV and ETV2.

Both concerts were also broadcast on Vikerraadio and Klassikaraadio, and ETV2 provided Estonian Sign Language (EVK) interpretation and subtitles for the event.

Saturday's TV broadcast began with the Song and Dance Festival Parade from the city center to the Song Festival Grounds, which was watched live or on replay by an average of 136,000 people on ETV, ETV2 and ETV+.

ETV2 also aired the parade without interviews, while Vikerraadio and Klassikaraadio provided a lively report as the parade made its way through the Estonian capital.

Vikerraadio and ERR's online news portal covered the opening performance of the XXI Dance Festival on Thursday, while ETV and ETV+ aired Friday's closing performance for TV viewers. ETV's broadcast was watched live or on reply by an average of 114,000 viewers.

Of ETV+ broadcasts, Friday's Dance Festival performance drew the most viewers, averaging 9,000.

Audiences also enjoyed Friday's Folk Music Festival, which was watched live or on replay on ETV by an average of 37,000 viewers.

Check out ERR News' Song and Dance Festival category to revisit coverage and watch performances from the XXVIII Song and XXI Dance Festival "Iseoma" ("Kinship") again.

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