Exit To Montenegro

“In the summer, many people here choose between going to a festival or going to the coast because they don’t have the money to do both,” explained Exit director Ivan Milivojev. “So, we have given them the opportunity to go to the coast and have a festival.”

Milivojev believes he can get largely the same audience for both events as there’s only 300 miles between Novi Sad, where Exit’s held, and the Montenegrin beach.

They’re not twinned festivals sharing the same line-up.

About 40 percent of Budva’s 20,000 or so population is Serbian.

Serbia and Montenegro were the same country until 1996 and remained closely connected for another 10 years.

The Montenegro event is being labeled “an Exit adventure,” rather than being called Exit Festival.

“If they were both Exit, we would confuse ourselves,” Milivojev explained. The Budva Jaz Beach, which is on the Adriatic coast, has some history as a music venue.

The Rolling Stones played a in a nearby field in 2007, part of the A Bigger Bang Tour, followed in 2008 by acts including Lenny Kravitz, Armand Van Helden, Goran Bregovic and Zdravko Colic.

Later that year, Madonna played there on her Sticky & Sweet Tour but that was the last major show Budva hosted.

In 2009 it was reported there would be a festival with acts such as Tina Turner, Britney Spears, and Zucchero, but it didn’t happen.

There was a three-year hiatus until a 2012 festival featuring mainly local acts. So far, no acts have been named for either Exit or Sea Dance.