Bitola Now Has a Tripe Soup Festival Too, While Around 30 Million Denars Are Earmarked on Paper for Festivals and Events

Bitola has festivals for the film camera, folklore, classical music, jazz, theatre, Shakespeare, youth, old-town songs and world cultures. From October 9 to 11, it gets a festival for tripe too. The first edition of "Čkembe Fest Bitola 2026" wants to turn traditional tripe soup, čkembe čorba, into a tourist and cultural brand.

The programme includes cooking competitions in three categories - traditional tripe soup, tripe meze and a tripe speciality - as well as exhibitions, organic food, handicrafts, folk ensembles and pop performances, plus a tourist tour for guests and participants. The theme isn't random: the collective nickname for people from Bitola is Čkembari, the tripe-eaters.

The organisers want an academic seal of approval as well. On Friday, October 9, at noon in the Manaki cinema, the First International Professional and Scientific Forum on Gastronomic Tourism is scheduled, titled "Balkan Cuisine - Tradition and Current Trends in Tourism and Hospitality". Lectures will be given by professors Naume Marinoski, Sašo Korunovski and Kliment Naumov. "We want to show that gastronomy isn't just food," says coordinator Nikola Karovski, adding that the conclusions will be sent to institutions as recommendations.

A city of festivals - and a city of public money

Behind the good atmosphere there's also a bill. In its 2026 Culture Programme, the Municipality of Bitola set aside 8.75 million denars directly for 18 listed festival projects. The biggest item is the Manaki Brothers festival with 3 million denars; 800,000 are earmarked for the Ilinden Days, 600,000 each for Bitola Open City and the Shakespeare festival, and 500,000 denars for the White Night on Širok Sokak.

That's not all. Another 900,000 denars are earmarked for marking November 4, 3.2 million for BITFEST, another 3 million for "additional" cultural events, and the Tourism Programme carries a total of 9 million denars, of which 6 million go to "Winter Tale" alone. On paper, around 30 million denars are earmarked for festivals and events.

Some of the festivals are fully covered by the municipality, some also by the Ministry of Culture, and all of them look for sponsors too. Nobody is arguing that the city shouldn't be lively. But when every new idea becomes a festival, it's fair to ask where the line is - and whether anyone will ever measure how many tourists, overnight stays and how much money each of them actually brought back.

If Čkembe Fest manages to become an international food brand, as the organisers hope, Bitola will have one more reason to be proud. If it doesn't, it will be one more entry in an already overcrowded festival calendar.