Merlin tells Sarajevo crowd: 'I am not perfect'
The singer addressed fans for the first time since the gate chaos, while promoters invited ticket holders shut out on opening night to come to the third show, which is tonight.
Dino Merlin finally said something about it. On Saturday, August 1, 2026, from the stage of the Kosevo stadium in Sarajevo, the singer spoke to his audience for the first time since the crush at the gates ruined the opening night of his three-concert run. He did not mention the gates, the queues or the people who never got in. He asked the crowd to go easy on him instead.
This was the second of three dates he booked at Kosevo this summer: July 31, August 1 and August 2. The last one is tonight.
“First of all I want to thank you, because without you none of this would be possible, and please do not be too hard on me, I am not perfect.”
He then explained why he was nervous in front of his own city.
“I have terrible stage fright, because I am singing in the city where I was born. Over there on that hill, in that maternity ward, that is where I was born, and I have been tied to this city by the umbilical cord ever since.”
That is the whole of what he has said so far about two nights that put Kosevo back in the news for reasons that have nothing to do with music.
What was offered to the fans locked out on July 31
Promoters told holders of unvalidated floor tickets to email proof to info@adriaticket.ba by 8 p.m. on Saturday. Anyone who did gets their ticket honoured for the Sunday show on August 2.
In practice, that pushes most of the damage from the first night onto the final date. All three concerts sold out, with tickets sold through adriaticket.ba.
Promoters reject the double-selling claim
In a statement, the organisers pushed back against the accusation that spread fastest online that night, that more floor tickets were sold than the floor could hold.
“We categorically reject all insinuations that this situation was caused by an excessive or duplicated number of tickets sold.”
The sentence refers to the floor section, where the bottleneck formed. The organisers blamed three things:
- a single entrance assigned to the entire floor section
- a large part of the crowd arriving late
- fans queueing at the wrong gates
What the second night looked like from outside the stadium
Security was heavier than on Friday. Vehicles belonging to the Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina passed in front of the stadium during a short window, with police and stewards posted on the approach roads. An improvised market operated outside the entrance, drink stalls and grills selling cevapi.
The going rates:
- a small bottle of water at a stall, 3 KM, around 180 dinars
- a resold ticket, 40 KM, around 2,400 dinars, twice the box office price
- at least ten street sellers working the crowd outside the stadium
Demand never dropped, even an hour before showtime. At one point during the evening, chants against the singer went up from the stands, something Kosevo has not heard on his previous homecomings.
Why tonight is the real test
We covered the opening night in “Merlin at Kosevo: two tickets for the same seat, thousands left outside”. The failure that night was at the gates, not on the stage.
Tonight the regular third-night crowd returns to the same floor section, joined by everyone who filed proof of an unvalidated ticket. The number of people funnelling through that one entrance goes up, not down. Unless the promoters have opened a second floor gate and started scanning earlier, the same bottleneck sits in the same place, with a bigger crowd in front of it.
Merlin asked the audience not to be too hard on him. What happens at the gate, though, does not get fixed from the stage.
