Sarajevo is entering the New Year season with the ambition of becoming the number one destination in the region, relying on a multi-day music program from December 30th to January 3rd, a new location for the public New Year’s Eve celebration, and the synergy of winter resorts and urban content.
The Director of the Canton Sarajevo (CS) Tourist Board, Haris Fazlagic, announces a large number of reservations in the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and high occupancy of accommodation capacities, while hoteliers emphasize that investment in the public New Year’s Eve celebration pays off many times over through direct revenues and long-term image.
Sarajevo records continuous growth in key indicators – last year’s New Year season exceeded 50.000 overnight stays during the New Year and Christmas holidays, and during the first 11 months of this year, an increase of more than 12 percent was recorded in terms of overnight stays.
“The city “lives” best during the New Year holidays, together with the period of the Sarajevo Film Festival. The focus is on an offer that retains guests, from gastronomy and cultural-historical values, through sports and congress content, to strong promotion outside BiH and the opening of direct airline routes. In the last three years, we have increased the average stay from 2.2 to 3 overnight stays, which is a huge success,” Fazlagic said.
This year’s multi-day program includes regional performers with an emphasis on attracting audiences from neighboring countries. The concert by Jelena Rozga will be held in the open space behind Sarajevo City Center (SCC) on Wednesday, December 31st, starting at 11 p.m. Before her, the group Divanhana and Dzenan Loncarevic will perform.
As emphasized by the Sarajevo City Administration, the main New Year’s concert is only the highlight of a rich program that will continue in the first days of the new year at Trg Prve brigade policije, opposite the City Hall. The audience will enjoy performances by popular artists – January 1st, 2026: the band Letu Stuke; January 2nd, 2026: Petar Graso; and January 3rd, 2026: the rock band Van Gogh.
When it comes to capitals in the region, Zagreb has the advantage that New Year’s celebrations are often part of a broader Advent program. This year, the city clearly profiled the city celebration at Ban Jelacic Square as an urban, festival-type event.
Belgrade will not organize a public open-air celebration of the New Year 2026, citing reasons related to the incident from the previous year in Novi Sad, where there will also be no New Year’s celebration. The decision was made out of respect for the victims of the tragic accident at the Railway Station after the collapse of a canopy.
The cancellation of the public celebration in Belgrade opens additional space for Sarajevo to attract some guests from this city, and the CS Tourist Board emphasizes that it is targeting the markets of Serbia and Croatia, highlighting the unique combination of a mountain environment (Jahorina, Bjelasnica, Igman, Vlasic) and urban entertainment in the city center.
“Given that we have Jelena Rozga and Petar Graso from Croatia and Van Gogh from Serbia, we also hope for a large number of tourists from neighboring countries, especially since there will be no organized celebration in Belgrade,” Fazlagic said.
Academic analyses support this strategy, and a professor at the Faculty of Economics in Sarajevo, Maja Arslanagic Kalajdzic, said that analyses of the justification for investing in a public celebration are based on data from tax administrations, statistical offices, cantonal institutions, and public companies, as well as on comparisons with regional practices (Budva, Porec, Zagreb, Belgrade).
“Urban destinations in the region compete for identical tourists, which is why it is necessary to differentiate the offer and profile target groups (families, young people, couples, then motives – entertainment, adventure, rest, getting to know culture). We recommended strategic branding of the city, precise definition of the target tourist, and field research of attitudes and perceptions during the event itself, in order to adapt the choice of performers and content to audience preferences and expand arrangements into multi-day packages,” she said.
The analytical section indicates that investment in event tourism brings short-term economic effects (organizational expenditures and revenues) and delayed, long-term effects on the image and recognizability of the destination (often visible within three to five years).
“Compared to regional practices, Zagreb has built European leadership through a strategic approach and an Advent program. Sarajevo, which has a recognizable brand, needs to plan content in a targeted and continuous manner, not as a one-off, in order to make maximum use of the potential of the New Year period,” the professor said.
Financial data confirm the importance of tourism for Sarajevo and BiH. According to data from the Central Bank of BiH (CBBiH), the tourism sector generated around 1.4 billion BAM in revenue in the first six months, more than eight percent above last year’s result for the same period, and Sarajevo traditionally accounts for more than half of total revenues, around 900 million BAM.
Fazlagic recalls international studies that estimate that every euro/dollar invested in tourism can be multiplied up to 15 times through direct and indirect effects.
“These are serious findings, and in the first half of next year we expect precise aggregate results with cantonal statistics and data from the CBBiH,” he said.
Hoteliers emphasize that the key operational factor is the weather.
“If there is enough snow and the season lasts three months, guests who come for New Year’s will extend their stay at Jahorina, Bjelasnica, or Vlasic. The most important asset of Sarajevo is the human factor – hospitality, readiness to help, and respect for diversity. Foreigners regularly point out to us that they rarely find such an attitude from hosts elsewhere,” Amir Hadzic, President of the BiH Hoteliers Association, said, adding that precise data on capacity occupancy will be known around January 7th.
Organizationally, this year’s public celebration gains a new dynamic – a location in the parking area opposite SCC, without stopping traffic, with the expected circulation of audiences from mountain resorts toward the city center on New Year’s Eve and in the opposite direction in the following days. The synergy of mountains and the city becomes a key element of branding: daytime skiing and evening concerts, along with gastronomic, cultural, and family-oriented content, with the aim of turning a one-night stay into a multi-day arrangement.
Historically, the City of Sarajevo, with a coordinating and promotional role, has regularly provided financial support for the event in cooperation with the city municipalities of Novo Sarajevo, Novi Grad, Centar, and Stari Grad, as well as CS and the CS Tourist Board (which formally joined in 2018, when investments reached 360.000 BAM).
The tradition of performances by regional and domestic stars (Dino Merlin, Zdravko Colic, Hari Mata Hari, Zeljko Joksimovic) has made Sarajevo one of the most desirable New Year destinations in the wider region, and the growth trend was interrupted only in December 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
