The Blues Estafette is Europe 's premier blues event. It is held each November in Utrecht 's Vredenburg Music Centrum.

The show runs from three in the afternoon until three in the morning, on two stages.

The large concert hall holds three thousand, while the more intimate small room holds four hundred.

The Blues Estafette has these guiding principles:

First, the blues acts at the Estafette are "roots" blues and R'n'B performers who play in an original style. Or performers who take their cultural heritage seriously and do not "rock up" the music.

Second, the Estafette is an aural equivalent to a specialist magazine, presenting acts in a variety of styles within the blues idiom. We try to choose artists who don't play too much on European stages or have never played Europe before.

Some exceptions are made to this policy for economic reasons. Therefore each year we present two or three headliners to attract audience members who are not familiar with the more "obscure" artists
.