The Netherlands celebrates Liberation Day on Monday, marking 69 years since Germany surrendered at the end of World War II.

The celebrations will start in Wageningen around midnight where the Liberation flame will be lit and torches then taken by runners to other fires all over the country.

Germany signed the capitulation documents in Wageningen on May 5, 1945. The south of the country had been liberated months earlier.

This year’s Liberation Day lecture will be given by Mary Robinson, former Irish president and UN high commissioner for refugees, the committee organising the celebrations said.

Festivals

Later on Monday,Wageningen will hold its traditional military parade, featuring veterans and their vehicles, a parachute drop and gun salute.Fourteen formal Liberation Day festivals are being staged all over the country: one in each of the 12 provinces and one in The Hague and in Amsterdam.

Dutch band Kensington and solo performers Douwe Bob and Gers Pardoel will make a whistle stop tour of the 14 festivals by helicopter.

The celebrations end with the traditional May 5 concert on the Amstel river in Amsterdam, which is broadcast live on television and will be attended by king Willem-Alexander and queen Máxima.

The weather is set to be dry with sunny spells everywhere and temperatures ranging from 14 Celsius at the coast to 18 Celsius in the south.

Bevrijdingsdag is only an official day off work for most workers once every five years and this will next happen in 2015.