The Cancelled Luna Park Contract Had a 2029 Deadline, Yet Gjorgjievski Promises an Amusement Park by the End of 2027

The 10-million-euro contract for Skopje's new Luna Park, which the City cancelled in August, set a 36-month deadline for completion. That means the works would have run until 2029, well past the deadline Mayor Orce Gjorgjievski promises in his programme: the end of 2027.

The contract with the company "Mastef" for design, procurement and installation of rides was signed on 6 May 2026, worth 621,007,264 denars, and only one bid arrived at the tender. It was cancelled on 17 August. The public only found out in October.

Gjorgjievski says the contract was terminated by mutual agreement because of a court ruling. The company whose ride contract from the Koce Trajanovski era the City had cancelled filed a lawsuit and won, so Skopje now has to pay for those rides. "When we announced the tender there was no court ruling, that happened after we signed the contract," Gjorgjievski explained. Since the new tender also included some of the rides already bought, the City decided not to pay for them twice.

The explanation sounds logical, but it leaves two questions. Why did a new 10-million-euro tender include rides the City already had under an old contract that was tied up in court? And how was a project with a contractual three-year deadline supposed to finish in less than two?

The new version of the plan goes like this: in about a month, installation of the seven rides from the old purchase should begin, alongside landscaping of the site. A new tender will be announced for a roller coaster and a Ferris wheel, and the City says the new contract will cost less than 10 million euros. "This changes nothing, the Luna Park will be finished by the end of 2027 as I promised in my programme," says Gjorgjievski.

A promise that outlasts mayors

Skopje has had no amusement park since 2017, when the rides of the old Luna Park, which had operated since 1973, were dismantled and sold. Trajanovski bought seven new rides and in 2017 announced that the park would open at the start of the following year. It didn't happen. Petre Shilegov dropped that concept and commissioned a study from the Italian studio "Bassa" for a larger park, but the pandemic stopped that too, and the money was reallocated. Danela Arsovska promised a Luna Park among the best in the Balkans, and during her term the project didn't budge.

Four mayors came and went, and where the rides were supposed to stand there is still a neglected lot and the remains of demolished buildings. One Skopje resident put it better than any analysis: "I was a kid when it stopped working. Now I have a kid, still not working. But for my grandson, God willing, it'll work."

If the seven rides really start going up next month, it will be the first physical step after years of press releases. If not, Skopje gets another chapter in which the tenders change and the deadline just keeps sliding. And who will explain that to the kids who have been waiting since 2017?