Riga

Riga is the Baltic's largest city, an Art Nouveau architectural showcase and a genuinely capable production and outsourcing hub for European and Nordic brands seeking craft at lower cost. Studios, post houses, and a growing tech and gaming sector cluster around the Old Town and the Art Nouveau district near Alberta iela. Latvian and Russian are both widely spoken alongside English, and the city's compact size keeps location moves fast. Riga's production infrastructure has grown substantially as Nordic and German brands increasingly shoot here for both cost and craft reasons.

Rye bread (rupjmaize) anchors the local diet, alongside smoked fish, cold beet soup (aukstā zupa) in summer, and a strong craft beer and mead revival. The Central Market, housed in converted Zeppelin hangars, remains a genuine working food market. Midsummer (Jāņi, late June) empties the city as residents head to the countryside; avoid scheduling major shoots then. Tipping runs around 10%. For the country baseline on visas and currency, see /countries/latvia.