Only at Balkan Trafik

A series of animations and activities will immerse you in the heart of an invaluable cultural diversity and provide a global experience that is the soul of the festival.
The Village will become one of the focal points of the festival, a place of animation and musical improvisation of our artists.
Every year, it is a tradition: musicians from various scene groups gather, engage in improvised musical encounters, and play all night long.

The gastronomic heritage of the Balkans is exceptionally rich: authentic products, culinary practices marked by all the cultural contributions that have crossed the region. The Balkans is a real “food highway”. Here, products and gastronomic traditions have travelled more than anywhere else, mixing along the way to reach the Maghreb or India. Communities are omnipresent in the Balkan Trafik gastronomic offer.

A wide selection of Balkan wines will be available at the bar: Serbia 🇷🇸, Croatia 🇭🇷, North Macedonia 🇲🇰 & Slovenia 🇸🇮.

This year, we will have, besides our 2 stages, a podium in the heart of our Balkan Village to show the richness of the musical culture of diasporas in Brussels.

Created in 2011, the Balkan Bazaar gathered about ten associations in the same room with a very particular decoration imitating the stalls of the old bazaars. Since then, the Balkan Bazaar has been transformed and has become the Balkan Village, a free space accessible to all. The decor has changed but the Balkan Bazaar remains a friendly place of exchange!

Balkan Trafik invites you to two FREE workshops during its 17^th edition on Place De Brouckère!
Tired of just watching? Join us and experience Balkan cultures! Be a part of it!
All levels welcome, of course!

• Albanian iso-polyphonic songs workshop
• Traditional Serbian folk dance worksop

“Sicanje” Traditional Bosnian Tattoos

Upon Balkan Trafik’s request, three passionate artists from Bosnia and Herzegovina unveil an old tradition of Bosnia and Herzegovina through a series of pictures.
“Sicanje”, “bocanje” or “križićanje” are local words used to describe traditional Bosnian tattooing.

Supposedly, this was old Slavic tradition which, later on, in the time of the Ottomans empire in Bosnia it acquired catholic symbolic features as a way of protecting the Catholic heritage. The pictures were taken in the municipality of Prozor-Rama, where a large number of traditionally tattooed old women still live. They were all photographed in traditional costumes and with traditional tools from their region.