European Blues Challenge – EBC2026

| concert, expo

I have attended almost all the European Blues Challenges since the very beginning, when it started in Berlin in 2011. In those days I had just bought a new digital camera and I was returning to concert photography. In that first year of the EBC I didn’t take many pictures because I was a newbie on the blues scene.

But since then, and except for 2014, I attended all the editions of the EBC and each was really a great and fun experience meeting the members of the Euroopean Blues Union (EBU) : a mix of festival organizers, blues associations, national blues magazines or broadcasters, and of course musicians and people in the record industry. It’s also great to discover new bands from all over Europe.

The format of the challenge starts with 2 nights of semi-finals – usually thursday and friday – where 10-12 bands (12 this this year) compete each night. The 4 best bands of each semi-final night are selected for the finals on the saturday. If you followed, that’s 8 bands on stage for the final on saturday.

The event says “challenge” in the title, but as a member of the Swiss Blues Society who organises of the Swiss Blues Challenge, I always tell the musicians that they should consider this event mainly as a social event, a great opportunity to meet and great people from everywhere in Europe, make new friends and have the chance to play in front of many festival director and bookers. I know a lot of bands who never reached the podium in any of those challenges, but started getting gigs outside their town, or region because other people noticed them in the challenges-

Here below are the winners of the European Blues Challenge. Check their websites or listen to them on your favorite music provider, they are all outstanding:

Winner – Adama Janlo, from Norway

Second – Gloria and the Doctors, from Italy

Third – SirJo Cocchi & Balta Bordoy – The Blues Way, from Spain

Winner of the solo/duo act – Tom Eylenboch, from Belgium

In addition some special prizes were awarded: René Rothacher (Eve Gallagher, Switzerland) won the the prize for best guitarist at the EBC, Richard Koster (The Hoochies, Netherlands) was the best Harmonica player.
My friend photographer Frank Nielsen received a “Blues Behind the Scenes” Award in the category “Media”, Runar Lia (Notodden Blues Festival) received this prize in the catgory “Promoter” and Marcin Krupa (Mayor, Katowice) received a special prize for the city of Katowice, the new “Blues Capital in Europe”.

      EBC2026 – Selection

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      EBU Blues Expo 2026 – Katowice

      | expo

      The 14th European Blues Challenge (EBC) is coming very soon and will take place this year in Katowice, Poland, organised by the European Blues Union (EBU).

      I have attended almost all editions and even if I haven’t taken a lot of photos in the very first editions, today I have a huge catalog of all the groups who participated in this event. Attending most editions also got me into the pool of photographers whose photos will be projected on a big screen at the Blues Expo 2026, also available on YouTube for those who will not be in Katowice.

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      Blues Music Award Switzerland – Behind the Scenes

      | blahblah

      The Blues Music Awards Switzerland were distributed on January 31, 2026, in a ceremony held at Mühle Hünziken, one of the best venues to listen to the blues in Switzerland. I had the pleasure and great honor to receive the BMAS Behind the Scenes award, which recognizes individuals or organizations who work behind the scenes such as radio station people, journalists, technicians, agents or photographers who contribute to the promotion of the Blues.

      I am very proud to receive the same price as artists, organizers or other important people that I admire so much on the swiss blues scene. In addition, I love the trophy itself, in cast bronze, patinated and lacquered, which weighs a lot, and was introduced last year by Cyrill Deschamps.

      The BMAS – Blues Music Awards Switzerland – was launched in 2025 as a merger of the Swiss Blues Awards, initiated by the Basel Blues Festival, and the vision of the Swiss Blues Society, who wished to extend the scope of these awards. For the past two years the ceremony was held at the Mühle Hunziken, presented by Larissa Baumann and Ray Fein, with live performances of all the musicians rewarded and nominated, supported by Rolf Lüthi and the Shuffle Kings and Dinu Logoz on the harmonica. My congratulations to all the following musicians who have received the Blues Music Awards in Switzerland:

      The official list, and the previous winners are on the page of the Swiss Blues Society.

      Thanks to my wife for the video and to my friends photographers Jean-Marc Etienne and Jacques Dornier to have covered the event , which I couldn’t cover entirely for many reasons!

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      Boom Tchak

      | expo

      I’ve always had a special tenderness for drummers. The drummer is the only musician of the group who must remain in the same place, most often at the back of the stage, never moving from there, and whose goal is to maintain the rhythm throughout the concert. He’s also the only musician who doesn’t need to know the key of the next song.

      The drummer is also a constant challenge for photographers. Often hidden behind their drums or cymbals, we often need to move around to find the right angle of view. He is also very often the musician sitting in the least illuminated part of stage (the back) the smoke machines are most of the time installed right next to them; two aggravating factors for making the capture difficult.

      As I love challenges, and also because my oldest friend with whom I started playing music is a drummer, I always promised myself to bring back at least one snapshot of the person holding the drums. I probably succeeded in that challenge with a high success rate, even thought there might be a few failures in really impossible situations. For the reasons mentioned above, those photos are often not the best of the evening, but they at least exist and show those people who are stuck in the back.

      Boom Tchak

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      Carmel

      | 1P1S, concert, music

      I became a fan of Carmel in the first 10 seconds I heard her first album released in 1984. I immediately loved her voice and the groove brought in by Jim Parris and Gerry Darby, I had the chance to see her for the first time in Montreux in 1984 and heard her again when she came to Geneva in 1986, where I managed to meet her and show her some of the photos of Montreux.

      I had scanned and published the slides of the 1986 concert in 2010 already, but had not yet scanned those black&white photos taken in 1984 in Montreux. I only remembered that these BW photos were much better than the color slides taken in 1986, for reasons old photographers all know, I might come back to that topic one day.

      I only found one of the prints I made in those days but was surprised to see that it had been signed by Carmel, which I had completely forgotten about. Anyway, it was fun to see those old negatives again.

      Carmel

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      Seattle Pike Place Market

      | 1P1S, travel

      1P1S – One photo one story – A series of articles in which I will tell a story related to a photo. I’ll start today with Seattle, an article which could also have been titled ‘a new beginning’, if we had been in an episode of a great saga..

      I first visited Seattle in February 2008. After a 16-hour and two-stop trip, I landed at the end of the day and was in juste in a foggy state, completely disconnected from my internal clock, and had only one idea in mind: get to my hotel and sleep until the next day, despite a huge desire to discover the city. Unfortunately, at the airport, I looking at the luggage belt which had been running empty for a few minutes, when a friendly employee approached me to ask if I was Mr. Losberger, and to inform me that my suitcase was somewhere in London. Change of plan: after checking in, there I go in zombie mode to buy some clothes to make myself presentable at the conference at I was attending the next day.T

      The sun was still shining a bit and I took with my Nikon D300, the first ‘serious’ digital camera that I had just bought a few months earlier, wishing to start photography again which I had neglected a little for a few years. After buying some clothes at GAP and as the sun was starting to get down on the horizon, I headed for the nearest touristic site, the famous Pike Place Fish Market. I was in Seattle only for a few days, and despite my lethargic state of the moment, I felt it was probably worth effort.

      As I arrived at the top of slightly downhill street, very close to the original Starbucks, I suddenly saw this magnificent view with the neon lights, the sea and islands in the background, and this perfect light and perfect moment to press the button. My slow mind also woke up during these few moments admiring the scene. I only took 4 or 5 shots with slightly different angles, then the light decreased, the fatigue stroke back and I returned to the hotel to crash in my bed.

      In the end it was really worth making that effort because in the following days the sky of Seattle was cloudy, foggy or loaded and I never had again the opportunity to shot a sky as blue as the one I had taken on that first evening. This photo is certainly nothing extraordinary and thousands of tourists probably have the same, but for me it remains something very special and the signature of my return to photography.

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      Chris Slade

      | concert

      Chris Slade is a legendary drummer who I have known since the end of the 70s, when Manfred Mann’s Earth Band was spinning all day long on my record player. I was a big fan at the time and still listen to Manfred Mann with great pleasure.

      Yep, I’ve known his name for almost 50 years, and I hadn’t seen him for a long time. The last time was in the 80s when he did, if I remember correctly, demos for a drum company at the Montreux Jazz Festival.

      In summary, in his career he played with Tom Jones, Manfred Mann, David Gilmour, Gary Moore, The Firm and AC/DC, which is quite a nice curriculum for a drummer, right?

      Photo album

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      Welcome on Losberger.ch!

      | blahblah
      ZZ Top @ Sierre Blues Festival

      Welcome to my new blog, created under my real name Losberger.ch and no longer under my generic pseudo sitatof (com and .ch).

      Following major system updates and my neglect, the old blog had serious malfunctions that I didn’t have time to fix at the time, so rather than embarking on lengthy repairs, I’m launching this new blog. I hope to maintain it more regularly than the old one, which will remain available for a few more months before sinking into the archives of the internet.

      This new blog will be in constant mutation for a while. While I am fairly satisfied with the overall presentation, I still have a lot to define, including the categories and tags I want to use for articles and, above all, the method I will implement to offer a blog that can be read in several languages, mainly French and English.

      But basically, my plans for this blog are:

      • To comment more extensively than on Facebook when new images are published.
      • To offer a monthly virtual exhibition (V-Expos) on a chosen theme.
      • To share stories related to a photo or event, which still needs to be created.

      Happy reading!

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