On 17 July 2017, on the Estonian island of Saaremaa, Jüri Leiten, general manager of the Saaremaa Opera Festival, Wu Ji, director of the Shanghai Opera, and Szilveszter Ókovács, general director of the Hungarian State Opera signed the contract about the cooperation of the three institutes. As a result, the two exclusive partners of the 2018 Saaremaa Opera Festival are the Chinese and the Hungarian Opera.