Drones Draw Halid Beslic Above Dino Merlin's Kosevo Show
The first of three Kosevo nights drew more than 60,000 people. Hundreds of drones formed Halid Beslic's face, and Dino Merlin followed with the song the two of them once sang together.
Dino Merlin played the first of three announced concerts at Kosevo Stadium in Sarajevo on the night of July 31, in front of more than 60,000 people. The loudest moment of the evening was not one of his choruses. It was something in the sky, and nobody in the crowd needed to know the words for it.
Hundreds of drones assembled into the face of Halid Beslic. The image drew a long ovation, and part of the audience was in tears. Merlin then sang „Godino vrela”, the song the two of them recorded together.
An accordion, „Ljiljani” and a stadium of phone lights
The tribute to the late singer did not end with the drones. In a separate segment, an accordion played the intro to Beslic’s „Ljiljani”, and the stadium sang it back in unison with phone lights held up. Only after that came „Godino vrela”, the one stretch of the night with no guest on stage.
Merlin came out around 9:15 p.m. and opened with „Da sutis”. He worked through „Kad si rekla da me volis”, „Mi”, „Hajde nocas mi dodji”, „Sve je laz” and „Je l’ Sarajevo gdje je nekad bilo”.
Who joined him on stage
Three guests appeared, each with a song of their own:
- Mahir Sulejmanovic, on „Sredinom”
- Senidah, on „Dodji”
- Ivana Banfic, on „Godinama”
Merlin dedicated „Zauvijek ovako” to his wife and addressed her by name from the stage, in front of a full stadium.
“Amela, I want to tell you that I love you and thank you for putting up with me.”
Near the end he turned to the crowd.
“Thank you for an unbelievable night. I enjoyed every moment of it.”
From the same stage he added a line that had nothing to do with the setlist: “Let a wish for peace go out from Sarajevo tonight, to all the good people of this world.”
Why did Kosevo wait 11 years?
This was Merlin’s first big stadium show in his home city in 11 years. He last filled Kosevo in 2015, and this is his fifth Kosevo overall. There was no break from performing in between, he simply kept his stadium shows outside Sarajevo. That eleven-year gap is why this run is being treated as a homecoming rather than another tour date.
It also explains the promoters’ arithmetic. Across three nights at the largest stadium in Bosnia and Herzegovina, they are counting on roughly 200,000 visitors. The opening night delivered more than 60,000. For the announced figure to hold, the remaining two have to outperform the first, because three nights of sixty thousand do not add up to two hundred thousand. Tickets for August 1 and August 2 are what closes that gap.
What comes next at Kosevo
The two remaining concerts are set for August 1 and August 2 at the same venue, the Asim Ferhatovic Hase Stadium. After the opening night, the open question is whether the drone show returns on all three evenings, or whether Halid Beslic’s face over Sarajevo was reserved for the opener.
If it repeats, it will be one of the rare cases of the same visual staged three times for a combined six-figure crowd. If it does not, the first night has already written itself into the Beslic story, and it did so without a single spoken sentence from the stage.
