FEST leaves February: Belgrade's film festival moves to October for its 53rd edition

The queue outside the Dom omladine in the snow. Late-night Berlinale prints catching their first audience after midnight. Nine cinemas running simultaneously across a single February week.

That was FEST in February for decades. The 53rd edition, announced for October 2 to 11, 2026, formally ends that arrangement.

The Belgrade Festival Center (CEBEF) finalised the decision in May. The official rationale is competition: the Belgrade Film Festival now runs in late January, and over the past three seasons it has pulled away a meaningful share of the same audience.

A second reason circulates in Belgrade’s cultural circles but does not appear in press releases. October aligns more neatly with the city Culture Secretariat’s annual disbursement cycle. February falls in the first fiscal quarter, which means funds must be secured the year before, and CEBEF has long argued this puts the festival under preparatory pressure it cannot absorb.

FEST Intro as a bridge

So that audiences who have built their February around FEST would not be left with nothing, CEBEF organised FEST Intro, a two-day program on February 25 and 26 at the Sava Center.

The slogan, “We apologise for the interruption”, quietly mocked the institution itself rather than the public. Four films were shown, carrying between them 12 Oscar nominations and awards from Cannes, Berlin and Venice.

The lineup included:

• “The Voice of Hind Rajab”, nominated for the Best International Feature Oscar, with the audience award at San Sebastian and the jury prize at Venice
• “Sentimental Value”, with nine Oscar nominations including Best Picture, Best International Feature, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay
• two further titles from the same festival cycle

The function of FEST Intro is more symbolic than programmatic. Three or four films across a weekend is modest for a city of Belgrade’s size. Zagreb, by comparison, runs a full festival in the same window with more than eighty titles.

The halls were full. The audience has not been lost, but it has been split.

What an autumn FEST might look like

The October slot gives the festival room to pick up films that have already proved themselves at Cannes in May and at Venice’s Mostra in September.

That opens the door to the latest by Cristian Mungiu (the 2026 Palme d’Or winner), Andrey Zvyagintsev (Grand Prix), Pawel Pawlikowski and Lukas Dhont, alongside other auteur titles from the second half of the year.

Informal briefings suggest a main program of around 60 films. The “Frontal” sidebar, which traditionally hosts one director’s retrospective each year, this time will feature six films by Andrzej Holland shot in exile since 1981. The retrospective is planned for the Kolarac hall, one of the festival’s historic venues.

What Belgrade gains in October

October has long been Belgrade’s book-fair month. This year the fair runs October 17 to 25. The festival’s directorate notes the overlap is partial: FEST closes October 11, six days before the fair opens.

Even so, March and October are now the two densest months in the city’s cultural calendar. The book fair, BELEF closing on September 17, FEST opening fifteen days later.

There is an open question whether such concentration damages individual events. Most European capitals spread their calendar more evenly across the year. Belgrade has chosen to compress almost all of its major cultural events into the period between June and October, a density that is also a forced choice for audiences.

The end of a February tradition

Snow. The long queues. Cinemas running twelve hours a day. The 1 a.m. screening. Debates that carried on in the cafes around the old Dom sindikata building.

That was FEST in its golden years across the 1970s, 1980s and early 2000s. October cannot easily reproduce that atmosphere. The weather is different, the audience is differently arranged, the city itself moves on a different rhythm.

The directorate promises the audience will not be lost. For a festival changing dates for the first time in half a century, that promise is harder than the announcement suggests.

Can a festival change its date and keep its audience?

The real test will not be the first October edition. First editions tend to carry novelty, advance budget and concentrated marketing. The second edition is the one that gets tested without that tailwind, when the curiosity fades and the institution is left with its own choice.

FEST has the authorial standing and the institutional weight to survive this move. The harder question is whether October can become a recognisable identity for the festival, the way February once was, or whether the festival will merely persist in a new slot without quite reassembling itself as a civic event.

What do you think: can a film festival with half a century of tradition change its calendar and still hold its cultural position in the city?