Unsound focuses on a broad swath of contemporary music — emerging, experimental, and leftfield — whose sweep doesn’t follow typical genre constraints. Influential, it has developed a reputation for always being ahead of the curve and serves as an annual industry meeting – a platform for an exchange of artistic ideas for musicians, visual artists, curators, journalists, record label owners and booking agents. 

Founded in 2003, in Kraków, Poland, Unsound wasn’t always the festival it is now. The very first edition ended with artists thrown out of a club for playing music that was too weird for regular patrons. Now, with the main festival still happening every year at a number of venues across Kraków, regular events also take place in New York, Adelaide and London. Between 2016 and 2018, Unsound also produced eleven festivals in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Caucasus, part of a long history of working with curators and artists in the post-Soviet region. Since 2020, Unsound has also produced the interdisciplinary festival Ephemera in Warsaw.

As well as spotlighting emerging artists, Unsound commissions and tours new shows and encourages transborder collaborations, adapts and reimagines abandoned spaces for concerts and club nights, and is known for its sound inspired Ephemera perfume project.  

Unsound also has a book and record publishing arm, in particular focused on releasing albums.