Feature | July 1, 2025
Once a year for a decade, jumpers from across Europe and beyond have convened in Košice in front of the Cathedral of St. Elizabeth. This gothic church looms over an elevated runway built in the heart of the city each summer for the JBL Jump Fest.
I’ve traveled twice to Slovakia for the event, and both times I couldn’t help but remark on what a unique competition it was. Of all the experiences the sport of track and field has given me, the JBL Jump Fest stands out as one of the most memorable.
It’s a meet that every jumper should try to experience at least once if they have the opportunity. It’s also a competition that every meet organizer could benefit from trying to emulate as an example of how an athletics competition can be run when there’s a genuine effort to make it the best it can be.
The first time I traveled to Košice for the JBL Jump Fest was in 2023, when I had the privilege of witnessing a triple jump over 17 meters for the first time, thanks to Andy Diaz’s seemingly effortless 17.20 meters leap.
In the 2025 edition, Jamaica’s Tajay Gayle put on a spectacular show in the long jump, setting a meeting record with 8.04 meters and narrowly edging out the Czech Radek Juška, who jumped 7.98 meters. Another Czech, Jan Štefela, entertained the crowd with his own meeting record of 2.28 meters the next day in the high jump.
On the women’s side, the Swedish jumper Khaddi Sagni would come within a centimeter of the meet record, jumping 6.69 meters. It would be the farthest jump by her since she changed her take off legs.
JBL Jump Fest History
This year marked the tenth anniversary of the event. Since its humble beginnings, it has grown to become a World Athletics Continental Tour Silver event, the highest possible rating for a street athletics event.
According to Peter Samuelis, the Athlete’s liaison and online marketing specialist for the event, the festival was created to celebrate the careers of the twin Slovak jumpers Dana and Jana Velďáková, who are from the region and took their first athletic steps in Košice.
The twins are among the most successful Slovak athletes in the history of the sport. Among their accomplishments, Jana is a 16-time national champion in the long jump and a two-time winner of the European Team Championships 2nd League. Dana is a 17-time national champion in the triple jump, has won the silver medal at the World University Games, and has won the European Team Championships 2nd League three times.
The meeting’s founder, Stanislav Návesňák organized the first edition of the street event in 2016 with the cooperation of the city council. Since then, it has become a social media sensation.
In 2022, videos of the meeting on Instagram and TikTok amassed over 13.5 million views and were being watched every three seconds. In a 2022 interview, Návesňák attributed the online social media success of the event to “purposeful marketing” since there was limited promotion available in traditional electronic media.
Addition of an Open Category
The JBL Jump Fest has undergone format changes over the years, with some editions offering short sprints and hurdles as well.
Due to increased interest in the event, the meeting organizers changed the format to include an “Open” category along with the “Elite” Tour Silver event to allow for more athletes to have a street jumping experience.
In 2025, the competition included three Silver Tour events–elite sections for the men’s and women’s long jump, as well as the men’s high jump.
The entrance standards for this year’s open categories were set as:
- Men’s long jump – 6.50 meters
- Men’s night long jump – 6.50 meters
- Men’s triple jump – 14.00 meters
- Men’s high jump – 1.75 meters
- Women’s long jump – 5.20 meters
- Women’s triple jump – 11.70 meters
- Women’s high jump – 1.55 meters
View this post on Instagram
The Heart of Košice
Košice, the second-largest city in Slovakia, is located in the eastern part of the country near the borders with Hungary and Ukraine. As somebody who grew up in Canada, it wasn’t somewhere I was familiar with until I came to the JBL Jump Fest for the first time, but there’s a charm to the historic center that I’ve enjoyed enough to return multiple times.
As I was walking out of the supermarket this year, I ran into a pair of fellow Canadians, which I guarantee happens a great deal less in Košice than in cities like Rome, London, or Paris. When we stopped to chat, they told me that Košice was one of their favourite stops on their European trip.
With a population of around 240,000, it is a major cultural, economic, and administrative center of Eastern Slovakia. The Cathedral of St. Elizabeth is the largest church in Slovakia and a prominent symbol of the city that anybody visiting will immediately notice when they come to the center.
Effort by Meet Organizers is Evident
It’s clear that everybody involved in organizing the JBL Jump Fest is trying hard to give the athletes an experience that they’ll always remember. For instance, they give athletes the choice to pick a song that will play while they step up to the runway before their jump.
In a 2023 interview, the meet director, Filip Dittrich, said, “For me, the most important thing is the competitors and the experience they will take away from Košice. The fact that someone travels thousands of kilometres at their own expense is unbelievable itself.”
In the two times that I’ve come to Košice myself for the event, I couldn’t help but remark what a different experience it was from every other track meet I’ve attended.
During the competition, the bleachers along the edge of the runway are filled with track fans and fellow athletes, but mixed in are also people who have likely never seen the sport live before, but who stop to catch a glimpse of the action.
It takes some getting used to warming up and competing in front of people dressed in evening wear, on their way to the restaurants and bars, or the occasional rowdy pack of guys gearing up to head to a football match.
A Meet for Athletes by Athletes
When I asked Peter Samuelis why he feels that athletes should come to Košice for the event, he told me that he felt that what was most special about the event was the one-of-a-kind venue. He also pointed out that the organizational team is trying to make athletes feel like they can have fun and compete at a “top level” at the same time.
It seems to be working. All the athletes I personally spoke to during the meeting lauded the experience.
In the words of Matt Indome, one of the athletes this year in the long jump representing Canada, “A lot of [people] from home have asked me about it and the best way I can describe it is that it’s the most memorable meet I’ve competed in. So much crowd engagement, a perfectly crafted competitive atmosphere that allows the jumpers to compete to their fullest potential but also have a lot of fun with the music and crowd engagement.”
He would go on to say that he feels the meeting sets a strong standard for how jumps meets should be run. I would have to agree with him. I’ve been to enough poorly run competitions over the years to appreciate the competitions that genuinely do try to support athletes.
I hope to return to Košice again in the future to attend the meeting and would strongly encourage any jumper who has the opportunity to do the same.