EXIT Defies Pressure To Make 25th Anniversary A Reality

EXIT festival celebrated its 25th anniversary this year, July 10-13, at Petrovaradin Fortress in Novi Sad, Serbia. To unsuspecting bystanders, it may have looked like an ordinary EXIT edition, but nothing could have been further from the truth.

As Pollstar had reported in the lead up to EXIT 25, it was far from certain that this year’s edition would even go ahead: For their support of student-led protests against political corruption within the Serbian government, the festival’s organizers faced much backlash – from slashed funding worth $1.7 million to threats of having the festival license revoked two days ahead of its official start.

This kind of retaliation didn’t come as a surprise, as the Serbian government, under leadership of Aleksandar Vucic, has been retaliating against anybody showing solidarity with the students, not just EXIT, but also actors, TV hosts, NGOs, and others.

There have been reports of an alleged use of a sound cannon to disperse the biggest crowd of protesters in Serbian history, between 300,000 and 1 million people according to different estimates, who gathered in the capital of Belgrade, March 15. The attack happened while they were observing 16 minutes of silence – one minute for each victim of a roof collapse at Novi Sad train station, which killed 16, and sparked the protests in late 2024.

Pollstar spoke with a member of EXIT’s booking team, who was on site when the so-called Long-Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) was allegedly used. Their report is as convincing as it is spine-tingling.

On Aug. 4, the UN’s human rights experts expressed deep concern over Serbia’s intensifying crackdown on students, professors, human rights defenders, civil society actors, and citizens amid one of the largest protest movements in the country’s recent history.

Under these circumstances, it took a remarkable organizational, mental, as well as spiritual effort to pull off what became the most powerful and emotional EXIT to date.

‘For Freedom!’: EXIT Festival Announces Final Edition In Serbia Amidst Undemocratic Pressures

As insiders have told Pollstar, getting the license turned out to be a fairly straightforward process. Organizers simply told the mayor of Novi Sad that EXIT would happen one way or the other: either in its controlled environment at Petrovaradin Fortress, where 40,000-plus daily visitors would be protected by organized security, or out in the streets of Novi Sad, where it would be complete chaos.
It was enough to get the decision makers to cave on the license, but it didn’t mark the end of the struggle, as the government had another stipulation for EXIT’s organizers: to remove and refrain from all messages in support of the student protests, which are ongoing across the country.

EXIT’s response was to voice its support for the students even louder from the moment its gates opened on Thursday, July 10. That’s when “all hell broke loose,” as one anonymous source told Pollstar.

On Friday, July 11, Serbia’s national security agency, the BIA, got involved, and threatened the head of the security firm that’s been hired by EXIT for the more than 10 years to handle crowd security at the fortress. The BIA demanded that he remove all of his almost 1,000 security staff from the festival unless all support for the student protests got removed from site.

After a full day of mounting tensions between organizers and authorities this threat was finally overcome by organizers pointing out to both the security agency as well as the responsible people in local and national government that their respective careers wouldn’t survive the media backlash that would inevitably follow if the international press got wind of the fact that the BIA endangered tens of thousands of international visitors for political reasons – in this case: for supporting unprecedented peaceful student protests against the very government the security forces work for.

The remaining festival weekend went ahead almost without disruptions. An intrusion occurred on the Saturday, where unidentified individuals entered the festival grounds only to remove signs in support of the student protests, including banners bearing the word “Pumpaj” (Pump it!), which has become the protesters’ war cry.

EXIT’s reaction was to put up even more banners than before. “Any attempt to censor or suppress freedom of speech will not succeed! The more you try to silence us, the more we multiply. The more you take down, the more we rise. The answer comes tonight—because freedom doesn’t fall from walls, it grows in hearts,” reads a statement from the EXIT team on their official Instagram profile.

Apart from this incident, EXIT 25 turned out to be a worthy celebration of a big anniversary, with many highlights happening all over the festival, including 40,000-plus visitors observing the 16 minutes of silence on opening night, as well as stellar performances by The Prodigy, Sex Pistols, now fronted by Frank Carter, and sets by Solomun, Indira Paganotto, Nina Kravitz, and Tiësto’s EXIT debut.

Students had their own dedicated stage at EXIT, from which they could address the international audience. Both the festival’s official opening and closing ceremonies were fully dedicated to the Serbian students. All proof that EXIT’s organizers didn’t cave in the face of political pressure to keep freedom, and freedom of speech in particular, alive. They showed bravery when it is needed the most, but rarely found: in moments when authority overreaches and thereby becomes illegitimate.

EXIT’s organizers already publicly announced that this year’s edition was the last to take place in Novi Sad, its home for the past 25 years, until the day freedom returns to Serbia. It’s only fitting that what began as a event in support of students protesting political corruption – back in 2000 it was the regime of former Serbian president and convicted war criminal Slobodan Milošević – would end in full support of another student movement, different in nature, but just as important in principle.

Subscribe to Pollstar HERE