With the traditional lighting of the festival fire and the reading of “T’ga za jug” by Konstantin Miladinov, the 65th anniversary edition of the Struga Poetry Evenings, one of the most significant international poetry events, was officially opened Wednesday night in Struga.
This year’s festival is held under the motto “Where Poetry Lives” and will last until June 29. The event is attended by about 70 poets, translators, critics and literary figures from Macedonia and several countries around the world, including Greece, Turkey, Spain, China, Italy, Mongolia and Mexico.
The festival was declared open by Macedonian President Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova, who in her address called Struga“ the most poetic city on the planet” and stressed that poetry still has the power to change the world despite technological changes and the development of artificial intelligence.
Festival director Nikola Kukunesh warned of the challenges faced by small languages in the digital age, emphasizing that with the disappearance of a language, a unique view of the world is also lost. He said that languages can only survive if they are actively used, created and translated literary works and if they are present in the contemporary digital space.
The winner of this year’s Golden Wreath, the highest award of the festival, is the Dutch poet Anneke Brassinga. A tree was planted in her honor yesterday in the Poetry Park, which traditionally started the festival program. The winner of the 2026 Bridges of Struga award is Daniel Hinds from the United Kingdom.
The program continues today with poetry readings by the authors who were shortlisted for the Miladinov Brothers award, a portrait of last year’s winner of this award, Julijana Velichkovska, as well as promotions of new poetry editions and international poetry readings. In the evening, the traditional “Nights without Punctuation” will also be held, one of the festival’s recognizable segments.
The Struga Poetry Evenings have been held for six and a half decades and represent one of the most recognizable cultural events in the country, in which some of the world’s most significant poetic names have participated and been awarded over the years.
