For the first time in 25 years, the Exit festival, a cultural and musical symbol of Novi Sad and the entire region, will not celebrate its birthday amidst final preparations for the famous opening of the Fortress gates for another multi-day festival edition.
Exit marks its 26th birthday in a different setting, on a World Tour that spans various global and regional destinations, representing a new development path for the festival.
Over the course of 26 years, Exit has been crowned multiple times with prestigious festival awards, including “Best Major European Festival”, as well as the accolade for Best Event Organisation in Europe last year.
The 25-year jubilee also marked the beginning of one of the most difficult periods in the history of the organisation, which resulted in the need to relocate the festival from the Petrovaradin Fortress, its home of several decades and the most recognisable symbol of Novi Sad. After publicly supporting the student movement and the right of young people to freely express their views, the organisation faced severe political and financial pressures, finding itself without institutional support, alongside the wider cultural and artistic scene in Serbia.
In addition to the aforementioned awards, the prestigious Take a Stand Award stands out for the “Live Live” campaign in cooperation with UNICEF. This recognised and honoured the success of a socially engaged project dedicated to addressing the current problem of digital addiction among young people through a series of campaigns that continue to be implemented today.
During the previous 26 years, Exit has hosted some of the biggest names in world music, such as The Cure, The Prodigy, Sex Pistols, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Massive Attack, Motörhead, Slayer, Iggy Pop, Grace Jones, Moloko, Pet Shop Boys, Liam Gallagher, Damon Albarn, Billy Idol, The Killers, Arctic Monkeys, Wu-Tang Clan, Moby, Faithless, Black Eyed Peas, Snoop Dogg, David Guetta, Manu Chao, Skrillex, Carl Cox, Underworld, Eric Prydz, Solomun, and thousands of other international, regional, and domestic acts of diverse genres who have shaped contemporary musical history.
Today, Exit is considered one of the most recognisable music festivals in the world. Over the past decades, it has brought more than 300 million euros in tourism revenue to Serbia, while CNN once estimated that Exit’s contribution to the international promotion of Serbia amounts to around 80 million dollars annually. The British publication The Economist described its importance to Serbia’s international image as priceless.
Following April’s No Sleep festival in Belgrade, May’s Sea Star, and a series of preceding music events, the next musical stop on the tour map will be Montenegro. During two authentic festival chapters within the Exit to Montenegro project, Ulcinj’s Velika Plaža in July and the Sea Dance edition in Budva in August will host some of the biggest names in electronic music today.
Another event in the summer line-up will be Spiral in Malta, which will gather the most exciting performers of today across the island from 31 July to 2 August. Afterwards, the spirit of Exit moves to Egypt, where the Starlight festival will bring together electronic music fans from around the world from 8 to 11 October, featuring major headliners and over 50 international and local acts. The festival will be held in the immediate vicinity of the world’s most grandiose wonder, thus becoming the first festival to merge the concept of modern sound with the heritage of the oldest ancient civilisation.
(Beta, 29.06.2026)
https://naslovi.net/2026-06-29/beta/danas-je-exitov-26-rodjendan-prvi-bez-finalnih-priprema-na-petrovaradinskoj-tvrdjavi/42020651
