As autumn quiets the Adriatic, Dubrovnik comes alive with art, light, and imagination.
Every November, Dubrovnik’s Old City transforms into a luminous playground as the Lumiart Festival of Light returns for a spectacular three-day celebration of art, technology and heritage. Now in its fifth edition, from November 7 - 9, the festival invites visitors to see Dubrovnik through a new lens — one of glow, projection, and wonder.
This year’s theme, “Underwater City,” invites artists to reimagine Dubrovnik’s historic architecture as if submerged beneath the sea. Across the Old City, projections, light installations and performances will bring the theme to life — transforming facades, courtyards and squares into glowing portals to an imagined world beneath the waves.
Lumiart is free to the public, with all installations and performances open for anyone to wander through after dusk. The festival’s organizers also keep the program flexible, ensuring that, even if the weather changes, the experience remains vibrant and alive.
The festival doesn’t rest solely on high-tech spectacle. Over the years, Lumiart has showcased a dynamic range of artistic expression. Performers Morena and Martin, known as the White Light Stilt Angels, once graced Stradun in their ethereal illuminated costumes, hovering above the crowds. Macedonian artist Emil Petro presented Life, a mesmerizing video piece accompanied by music from Sasha Lattuca, blending image and sound into a poetic narrative. Interactive installations such as Megaball and I Need a Break by the Visualia Group, and the expressive mask works of Romanian artist Ignat Radu, have transformed courtyards into spaces of playful engagement.
One memorable highlight from a previous edition paid tribute to Hedy Lamarr, the Hollywood star and inventor, with a projection that illuminated the façade of Café Bar Cele — turning it into a living monument to innovation. The Dubrovnik Cathedral has also served as a canvas, its baroque lines reinterpreted through light to mark historic anniversaries and local celebrations.
After several years of growing audiences and ever bolder artistic experiments, Lumiart 2025 builds on that creative momentum. This year’s edition once again turns to Dubrovnik’s Old City, where the Underwater City theme promises new collaborations between light designers, visual artists, and performers — all united in exploring the fluid boundary between history and imagination.
Wandering through the illuminated streets, visitors can expect both surprise and serenity: the hush of the sea imagined in light, the shimmer of ancient stone reawakened by color. In quieter November evenings, when the crowds have faded and the air turns crisp, Dubrovnik’s glow feels even more intimate — a reminder that magic doesn’t only belong to summer.
Whether drawn by curiosity, art, or simply the desire to see Dubrovnik differently, Lumiart offers an experience that blurs the line between the city’s past and its luminous future.
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