Bitef 2026: the selection is set, titles still under embargo
Spasoje Milovanovic, the new Bitef artistic director, has announced between six and seven productions in the main programme for autumn 2026, with the emphasis on ensemble work from across Europe.
- Bitef 2026 will have between six and seven productions in the main programme.
- The artistic director is Spasoje Z. Milovanovic, who also chairs the board.
- The titles remain under embargo until the official presentation.
- The festival budget consists of twenty million dinars from the Belgrade Secretariat for Culture plus an additional five million from other sources.
The statement issued by the Bitef management on Wednesday, May 22, runs to two sentences. The first confirms that the board has approved the list of productions for the coming festival. The second asks the public for patience while the artistic director prepares his rationale. Between those two sentences sits the position Bitef occupies as it prepares for its sixtieth anniversary.
Artistic director Spasoje Z. Milovanovic has announced between six and seven productions in the main programme, a step down from last year’s selection. The titles are yet to be revealed.
Ensemble in place of auteur
From what Milovanovic has so far confirmed, this year’s concept shifts the centre of gravity from directors’ signatures to ensemble productions, which in Bitef’s history is a return to the festival’s early phase. At a moment when European stages are producing more solo pieces than well-drilled groups, this direction is not politically neutral.
The artistic director has described Bitef as “the most exciting international theatre festival”, deserving top productions from around the world. The phrasing is declarative, but it is not without self-awareness: it shifts the accent from regional to global selection, which for the Belgrade audience means the coming edition could be more than what has been arriving from the immediate neighbourhood in recent years.
What we know about the budget
The festival’s financing remains a delicate matter. The Secretariat for Culture of the City of Belgrade has paid in twenty million dinars, which forms the main basis of the programme. Bitef has also announced that another five million has been secured from other sources, bringing total programme funds to twenty-five million dinars.
The financing plan, however, has not been adopted in full. In his address the artistic director used the phrase “satisfied with the choice in these circumstances”, a turn of phrase that in the cultural sector rarely means full comfort.
The most exciting international theatre festival, which Bitef is and which we want it to remain, deserves top productions from around the world, not only from the region and Belgrade.
Milovanovic’s sentence carries both a declarative gesture and a veiled critique of the conditions in which the artistic director has found himself.
A parallel Month of Independent Stage
Alongside the main programme, the Bitef Theatre continues its autonomous work under the title Month of the Independent Stage 2026. The selection covers over twenty productions from Serbia and the region, organised in programme strands that naturally overlap:
- inclusion theatre, open to artists with different life experiences
- works that interrogate the position of the individual within systems that produce violence
- ensembles working with the erosion of values and the crisis of meaning as a thematic frame
- programme strands devoted to young authors working outside institutions
The difference between the main Bitef and the Bitef Theatre has never been only organisational. The main festival makes an inventory of the European stage. The Bitef Theatre produces the local answer to that inventory.
What is at stake
Bitef’s sixtieth anniversary arrives at a moment when European festivals are seriously rethinking themselves. Berlin’s Theatertreffen is reducing the number of invitations, Avignon is searching for a new curatorial formula, Vienna is investing in digital extensions. Belgrade for now is sticking with the classic model: a physical selection, the main programme, side events and the Month of the Independent Stage.
The question Bitef is now opening is not what will be played, but what the festival will be for the city that is hosting it in its sixtieth year. The artistic director’s embargo on titles will most likely be lifted in the coming weeks. It will then be clearer whether this year’s selection is an attempt to return Bitef to its origins or a preparation for a next step.
Can a single anniversary carry both a poetics and a financial reconstruction in one move?
