By Beyoncé Vásquez
The 6th edition of the Sunny Hill Music Festival included Dua Lipa and Shawn Mendes as headliners this weekend. The Sunny Hill Festival is the largest music festival in Prishtina, Kosovo.
Sunny Hill Music Festival is a three-day event. On Friday, Aug. 1, Dua Lipa performed on the main stage as an exclusive date from her Radical Optimism tour. Lipa surprises the audience with a cover of a classic song, choosing a different one for every show. For her Sunny Hill Set, she sang the Albanian classic “Era” by Kosovan band Gjurmët, in Albanian with her father, Dukagjin Lipa. Her performance with her father was a tribute to her Albanian heritage and her father’s musical background.
Between performances, Lipa spoke to the audience in her native language, thanking them for their support since 2016, “in my first concert” in Pristina. “Since then, we have had six editions of the festival,” she recalled on Friday evening, counting also that solo concert in the early stages of her career.
Lipa is a significant and recurring headliner. She has played at Sunny Hill in 2018, 2022, and headlined again in 2025. Dua Lipa and her father founded the festival in her parents’ hometown in 2018, with a mission to “change the rhetoric of what people think about Kosovo and it being war-torn.”
Dua Lipa performs at Sunny Hill Festival
On the second night, Shawn Mendes headlined the main stage for the first time in Kosovo. He performed as part of his 2025 On The Road Again tour, celebrating a decade of his music. He sang his viral songs, ” If I Can’t Have You,” “In My Blood,” and “There’s Nothing Holdin’ Me Back.”
“All we got is love!!,” Mendes captioned his post for his Sunny Hill performance. Lipa posted a clip of Mendes, showing him captivating the crowd. “NIGHT 2 @sunnyhillfestival 🫶🏻x1000. Unreal night unreal performances unreal energy from the crowd!!! Feeling proud is an understatement I think for all of us @dukagjinlipa @anesalipa @rinalipa @gjinlipa,” Lipa captioned her night two post.
