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Spring Fest, known as SF (motto: True Spirit of Youth), is the annual social and cultural festival of the
Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur The Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur (IIT Kharagpur or IIT-KGP) is a Public university, public institute of technology, research university, and autonomous institute established by the Government of India in Kharagpur, West Bengal. Foun ...
held during January in the spring semester. The first edition was held in 1960. The 66th edition of Spring Fest was organized from 24th January to 27th January 2025.


Inception and growth

The first edition of Spring Fest was held in 1960, which makes it one of the oldest college fests in India. It was conceived as a platform for the students of IIT Kharagpur to showcase their extra academic skills. Over the years, it began to attract participants from the neighboring colleges of West Bengal. In the last decade or so, the fest grew in scale, attracting participants from all over India and as well as abroad. The 2019 edition of the fest received a footfall of over 80,000 people. The 2021 Spring Fest was held online drawing 100k live viewers.


Activities

During the fest, students from IIT Kharagpur and from different colleges all over the country participate in a multitude of social and cultural activities. The ambit of the events encompasses various genres like Dance, Music, Dramatics, Photography, Literature, Quizzing, Food Fest and Fine Arts. Tremendous participation and aggressive competition are seen in all the events, especially the flagship events of SF, namely Nukkad, Shuffle, Wildfire, Rangmanch, Centrifuge, and Lake Side Dreams. The preliminary rounds of Nukkad, Shuffle and Wildfire happen nationwide. Every city that Spring Fest visits to conduct prelims, the whole atmosphere turns festive and the creative lot throng to the venue to see the show of talent. Other non-competition based events include Hard-Talk, which involves talks/conferences by eminent personalities from a variety of fields, a talk by motivational speakers and various workshops on Filmography, mocktail making, cupcake dressing etc. The number of these events is particularly large and serves to cater to the very large number of participants — both local as well as from other colleges all over the country. The hub for major activities during the fest is called the Arena, which has the Informals and Perpz stage. The informals stage hosts various fun filled casual activities, for which the participants can win numerous prizes. The Perpz stage is an all day dance floor with a DJ, that attracts huge crowds. Apart from this the arena also has numerous food and corporate stalls.


Pro Nights

The evenings are notable for the "Pro-Nights", more commonly known as Star-Nites — the biggest events in Spring Fest which usually involve live concerts by some of the most famous musicians and bands of national and international acclaim. All the Star Nites are free to attend for any student of the institute and all registered participants. The
genre Genre () is any style or form of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.) with socially agreed-upon conventions developed over time. In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other fo ...
s of music are wide and varied and involve pop, rock and fusion bands. The venue for these events is the Tagore Open Air Theater (TOAT) and Jnan Ghosh Stadium which usually get packed to their full capacity during the Star-Nites, with crowds of up to 23,000 people. Famous Indian artists like
Armaan Malik Armaan Malik (born 22 July 1995) is an Indian playback singer, songwriter, record producer, voice-over artist, and actor. He is known for his singing in multiple Indian languages. He is the brother of music composer Amaal Mallik. Previously ...
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Shalmali Kholgade Shalmali Kholgade is an Indian playback singer who predominantly sings for Bollywood films. In addition to Hindi, she has also sung in other Indian languages such as Marathi language, Marathi, Bengali language, Bengali, Telugu language, Telugu, ...
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Pritam Pritam Chakraborty (born 14 June 1971), also popularly known mononymously as Pritam, is a National Award winning Indian composer, instrumentalist, music producer and singer. Graduating from FTII in Sound Engineering, he worked as an ad jin ...
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Shankar Mahadevan Shankar Mahadevan (born 3 March 1967) is an Indian singer and composer who is part of the Shankar–Ehsaan–Loy trio that writes music for Indian films. In 2023, he was awarded an honorary doctorate (''honoris causa'' degree) by Birmingham Ci ...
, Shivamani,
Sukhwinder Singh Sukhwinder Singh (born 18 July 1971) is an Indian playback singer who primarily sings Bollywood songs. He sang " Jai Ho" in the film '' Slumdog Millionaire'', for which he won a Grammy Award for Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Televisi ...
and classical performers such as Pandit Debashish Bhattacharya, Pandit
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, and Pandit Divyang Vakil have performed here. Bands like The Local Train, Coshish, Order of Chaos,
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, and Spunk have also performed. International bands like Dead By April Breathe, the Floyd Sound, Monuments, Led Zepplica, TesseracT and The Order of Chaos have also performed on the Spring Fest stage. Spring Fest has also hosted many EDM artists from across the world namely Nina Suerte, The Progressive Brothers, Diego Miranda, Zaeden and Zephyrtone.


Events

Spring Fest consists of more than 130 events from varied genres that provide a platform for students where they can prove their mettle and caliber. The fest conducts its Hitch Hike - Nation Wide Prelims held in 8 cities for events like Wildfire, the national level rock band competition; SF Idol, Solo Singing competition; Shuffle, the street dance competition;Shake a Leg, Solo Dance Competition; Two for a Tango, Duo Dance competition; and Nukkad, the street play competition. Wildfire attracts registrations from multitudes of bands, and prizes in the 2019 edition were worth more than 5 lakh INR. Spring Fest 2018 for the first time added preliminary round for the events Hilarity Ensues and Poetry Slam which was held in cities closer to Kharagpur namely Kolkata, Ranchi and Bhubhaneshwar. These rounds were termed as the Eliminations round. Most of the socio-cultural activities are day events which involve dramatics, music, dance competitions, fine arts contests, quizzes, food fest, gaming and other literary events. Judges of the competitions are reputed and famous personalities from different fields and organisations. Centrifuge, the inter-collegiate dance event, is arguably the most keenly followed event of the fest. The other notable events are Rangmanch, the inter-collegiate dramatics event; Sargam, the eastern musical jamming competition; and Mary Bucknell Trophy, the prestigious quiz competition. Notable additions of the previous editions have been Prom Night, Silent DJ, Poker Night, Fashion Show, Beat Boxing competition and many more.


Notable guests

Every year many esteemed personalities of different fields from around the country are invited as guests and judges for different events and competitions. Some of the prominent guests to participate in the festival are
Ashish Vidyarthi Ashish Vidyarthi (born 19 June 1965) is an Indian actor who predominantly works in Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, English, Odia, Marathi and Bengali films. He is noted for his antagonist and character roles. In 1995, he receive ...
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Rakesh Bedi Rakesh Bedi (born 1 December 1954) is an Indian film, stage and television actor. He is known for his iconic comic roles in films such as ''Mera Damaad'' and ''Chashme Buddoor (1981 film), Chashme Buddoor'' (1981). He has also appeared in tele ...
, Purbayan Chatterjee,
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, Gilad Dobrecky,
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, Lilette Dubey, Pt. Debashish Bhattacharya,
Kailash Kher Kailash Kher (born 7 July 1973) is an Indian playback singer, live performer, and composer. He sings songs with a music style influenced by Indian folk music and Sufi music. He was inspired by the classical musicians Kumar Gandharva, Hrida ...
, Jim Ankan Deka,
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Nagesh Bhosle Nagesh Bhosale is an Indian film, television and theatre actor. He acted in ''Anuja'' which is nominated at the 97th Academy Awards (Oscar 2025) in the live action short film category. He also worked on the 2018 film ''Hotel Mumbai'', alongs ...
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Ankur Deka Ankur may refer to: * ''Ankur'' (film), a 1974 Indian Hindi-language film by Shyam Benegal * Ankur (food), edible sprouts * Ankur (name), an Indian given name *'' Ankuram'', 1993 Indian film *'' Anguram'' 1982 Indian film {{Disambig