Staged within the grounds of Novi Sad’s Petrovaradin Fortress, overlooking the Danube, EXIT was so named to reflect the hope of young Serbs for an ‘exit’ from the dark years of Milosevic’s rule.
At the end of a decade of lost wars, economic disaster and international isolation, Milosevic fell in October 2000, shortly after the first edition of EXIT.
Serbia came in from the cold and the festival received millions of euros in funding from the government, local municipalities, and public enterprises – money that the state recouped many times over in the form of spending by the estimated 200,000 visitors to the festival every year.
EXIT provided Serbia with some very welcome rebranding, drawing a host of major acts, earning positive international media coverage and picking up the Best Major Festival award at the European Festivals Awards in 2013 and 2017.
In 2014, it launched Sea Dance in Becici, near Budva.
Serbia’s support for EXIT continued after the Progressives’ rise to power in 2012 despite the party’s roots in the ultranationalism of the 1990s and Vucic’s own role as Serbia’s feared information minister in the last years of Milosevic’s rule.
In 2025, however, the organisers voiced solidarity with student-led protests triggered by the fatal collapse of an outdoor canopy at Novi Sad’s newly renovated railway station in November 2024, a tragedy many Serbs blamed on the corner-cutting, nepotism and corruption that NGOs and graft watchdogs say have flourished under the Progressives.
The government did not respond publicly, but EXIT’s organisers said that from the moment they stood with the students “we have been completely denied public co-financing at all levels of government” and announced that the 2025 festival would be the last in Serbia.
Cue the relocation to Montenegro, branded ‘EXIT2Montenegro’.
In early July, Ulcinj will host EXIT and, in late August, Sea Dance will return to Becici after a hiatus of several years amid an investigation by Montenegro’s competition regulator, which cleared the festival in February. Tickets to Sea Dance will be free.
Responding to the concerns expressed by local festival organisers like Pavlovic, Kovacevic said EXIT’s relocation would help the event industry as a whole.
“We absolutely understand the challenges faced by local festival organisers and believe they deserve greater visibility and support,” he told BIRN. “We have already established contact with nearly all major local organisers and proposed joint initiatives, aiming to position Montenegro as a significant event destination in Europe, which is also the main objective of the EXIT2Montenegro project.”
Music tourism is growing, Kovacevic stressed, citing forecasts that global revenues will reach 250 million euros by 2030.
“We propose that the Montenegrin Government reinvest VAT from EXIT visitors into event tourism for long-term growth, while also improving the industry’s institutional and tax frameworks,” he said.
Approached for comment, the Office of the Montenegrin Government directed BIRN to the Ministry of Tourism, which did not reply.
