Serbia’s EXIT music festival plans homecoming after student election victory

NOVI SAD, Serbia (AP) — Founded by protesting students in Serbia in 2000, the EXIT festival has become one of Europe's leading music events. It is now preparing a “special edition” next year to mark a homecoming made possible by a new generation of activists in the Balkan country.

EXIT pulled out of Serbia last year, citing pressure from authorities over its support for a student movement behind a wave of anti-corruption protests. After students scored a stunning victory in the Oct. 25 parliamentary election, EXIT announced it was returning home.

“We always said when freedom is back in Serbia, EXIT will be back as well,” founder and CEO Dusan Kovacevic told The Associated Press in an interview this week. “We are incredibly proud of them (students), and of the citizens and all of us (who) managed to win this fight.”

Traditionally held every July at the Petrovaradin Fortress in Serbia’s northern city of Novi Sad, EXIT has won several international awards and hosted hundreds of stars from the Pet Shop Boys and Billy Idol to Moby and the Prodigy. The dayslong, multi-stage festival has attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors worldwide.

But, Kovacevic said, EXIT was “blacklisted” by authorities after backing the student-led protests that erupted in response to a deadly train station canopy collapse in Novi Sad in 2024. The festival lost funding and faced security threats, blackmail and cancellations by sponsors who had backed it from its early days, he said.

“It was not possible to continue organizing EXIT in Serbia under such pressures and such circumstances,” Kovacevic said.

Serbian authorities at the time denied putting political pressure on the festival.

Former strongman ruler Aleksandar Vucic and his right-wing party were accused while in power of stifling democratic freedoms and of rampant corruption, which they have denied. Many in Serbia believed the canopy collapse, which killed 16 people at the renovated Novi Sad station, stemmed from corruption and negligence.

Having founded EXIT during the movement against then-President Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, Kovacevic said he knew the risks of taking on an authoritarian regime. “I think we went full circle,” he said.

At the 2025 anniversary festival, EXIT was nearly left without official security after it displayed banners in support of the students, Kovacevic said. Italian singer Gala, whose hit “Freed from Desire” became an anthem of the protests, also opened the festival’s main stage alongside protesting students.

“We knew that we were risking everything we created,” he said. But he said EXIT could do it no other way: “We didn’t develop social responsibility as a sector inside the festival. We were born out of it.”

EXIT has championed projects to raise awareness of the dangers of drugs and promote regional cooperation in the divided Balkans. After it left Serbia, it organized several events in the region and against the backdrop of the Great Pyramids of Giza in Egypt.

During their protests in 2000, students at the Novi Sad university held weeks of concert parties, theater and movie events that turned into EXIT the following year.

Serbia in 2000 was eager to come out of international isolation after years of sanctions, wars and a NATO bombing in 1999, Kovacevic recalled. The energy was such that “almost all the artists said that they had one of the best gigs in their career," he said.

The festival next year could rival those from the initial years, Kovacevic predicted. While EXIT had initially planned to return in 2028, “thousands and thousands” of messages came pleading for a 2027 event, he said.

“The excitement is huge,” Kovacevic said. "We all expect something very special to happen, and we expect that it will be one of the best editions so far.”

FILE - People sleep at bank of the Danube river across the Petrovaradin fortress, the venue of the Exit music festival in Novi Sad, Serbia, Thursday, July 8, 2021. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic, File)

FILE - Visitors to the Exit music festival during one of the concerts in Novi Sad, Serbia, Thursday, July 8, 2021. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic, File)

FILE - Visitors to the Exit music festival dance on one of the stages in Novi Sad, Serbia, early Monday, July 14, 2008. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic, File)

Serbia's Exit festival founder and CEO Dusan Kovacevic speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in Novi Sad, Serbia, Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic)

FILE - Visitors of the Exit music festival dance on one of the stages in Novi Sad, Serbia, Thursday, July 10, 2008. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic, File)

NEW YORK (AP) — At least eight people have died after a three-story building in Brooklyn collapsed at the edge of a construction site, New York City’s mayor said Thursday, as firefighters kept digging through the rubble to find others who may be trapped beneath the wreckage.

The building came down Wednesday afternoon. At least 17 people have been injured, including three firefighters, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said.

“There are no words for a loss of this magnitude,” Mamdani posted on X. “My heart is with the families and loved ones of those we have lost, those who are injured and everyone grieving today.”

Scores of firefighters and police officers wielding pickaxes and power saws clambered over the rubble pile overnight, punching holes through the ruins to pull dust-covered people from beneath piles of twisted wood and brick.

Rescuers used dogs to sniff for survivors. Firefighters used orange buckets as they removed debris from the rubble piles trying to reach people who may be trapped.

Heavy rain was forecast for the city on Thursday afternoon. It wasn't immediately known how that would affect search efforts.

The cause of the collapse was under investigation, but New York City’s buildings commissioner, Ahmed Tigani, noted that when the building fell, construction workers were excavating an empty lot next door for a new building.

Much of the rubble from the collapsed building — a mixed-use structure with apartments sitting atop ground-floor commercial space — wound up in a huge pile inside the construction pit. Another building that shared a wall with the collapsed structure remained standing, but its wall was shorn off, exposing the rooms inside, including a bedroom and closets filled with clothing.

About 250 firefighters were working the scene, Mamdani said. Two deaths were announced Wednesday and the others were confirmed Thursday.

On Wednesday night, firefighters pulled a woman — still alive and moving — out of a hole they had dug into the rubble pile, hoisting her up on a stretcher and rushing to a waiting ambulance. Additional people were pulled from beneath the pile as the night went on.

FDNY Commissioner Lillian Bonsignore said the rescue teams were performing “dangerous and perilous” work. “Every move is choreographed,” she said.

Phone and email messages seeking comment were left Wednesday with the architect, property owner and general contractor listed in city records as being associated with the construction project.

One resident of the collapsed building, Anderson Velez, told the New York Post he was at work when his wife called and said she and their two kids, ages 7 and 2, were trapped in the wreckage.

“She called me when the building collapsed while she was inside with rubble on top of her. She was screaming for someone to help get my son out and then the call cut off,” he said.

Velez said he later learned that his family had been pulled from the rubble alive.

Associated Press writers Kathy McCormack in Concord, New Hampshire, and Dave Collins in Hartford, Connecticut, contributed to this story.

First responders work the scene after a building collapsed in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Ryan Murphy)

First responders rescue a person after a building collapsed after a building collapsed in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Ryan Murphy)

First responders work the scene after a building collapsed in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Ryan Murphy)

First responders rescue a person after a building collapsed after a building collapsed in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Ryan Murphy)

First responders work the scene after a building collapsed in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Ryan Murphy)