EXIT is a summer music festival in Petrovaradin fortress of Novi Sad, Serbia. It exists since 2000 and usually lasts for 4 days.

Previous acts on main stage were Garbage, White Stripes, Carl Cox, Iggy Pop, Cypress Hill, Underworld, Moloko, Massive Attack, Fatboy Slim, Stereo MC's, Apocalyptica, Tricky, Neneh Cherry, Slayer.

EXIT 05 was held over four days between July 7-10 2005, and was visited by over 50,000 people.

The inaugural installment of EXIT was held over 100 days in the summer of 2000. Initially the festival had a pronounced political component representing, in effect, another form of anti-Milosevic protest. Although, due to fear of regime repression, its activism was thinly veiled under the guise of getting the youth interested in the political process, the festival's ties with Otpor and other forces pushing for the regime change were clear to all that attended.

Through multiple appearences of domestic bands like Darkwood Dub, as well as all sorts of other art performances, the crowds were encouraged to get envolved. The festival ended a couple of days before the now historic September 24, 2000 general federal elections, which ended up being the first step in dictator's overthrow, in the sense that they provided the legal basis for Milosevic's eventual forceful removal from power on October the 5th.

The following year's festival was to be the celebration of Serbia being free of Milosevic, as well as of the country opening up to the world again after years of international isolation. In many ways the festival became the darling of the new authorities who made sure it recieved plenty of government funding in addition to all the commercial sponsors. Though it was pretty strange to see people like the Minister of Finance Bozidar Djelic and the National Bank governor Mladjan Dinkic performing at a raucus youth music gathering, the festival was still an overwhelming success.

It was cut down to the more focused and managable 9 days with foreign acts like Finley Quaye, Banco De Gaia, Kosheen, Tony Allen, Manchild, Maximum Roach, 4 Hero, etc. rocking the Main and DJ stages. Still, equally if not more exiciting for the Serbian crowds was an opportunity to again see the acts from other parts of ex-Yugoslavia like Darko Rundek, or KUD Idijoti that not too long before that started touring Serbia again after staying away for close to a decade.

This was also the year when the festival organizers started to carve out its musical profile. With Main stage reserved for most commercialy appealing acts (both foreign and domestic), they also introduced the DJ and Rock stages, clearly indicating the festival would be open to all kinds of music.

In addition to music, this year's EXIT featured drama perfomances from different regional theatres, as well as workshops and socio-political roundatables disscussing issues like renconciliation among the nations of former Yugoslavia.

EXIT's 2002 edition was in many ways a repeat of previous year. It also lasted 9 days and it also featured many of the same performers like Tony Allen, Manchild, Banco De Gaia, Darko Rundek, Roni Size, Van Gogh, Love Hunters, though it brought plenty of DJ talent like David Morales, Darren Emerson, Lottie, Marshall Jefferson, as well as Main stage acts like Asian Dub Foundation, Transglobal Underground, Smoke City, Blue State, etc.

Still, even if attendance was impressive once again, many of the crowds were somewhat dissapointed by the absence of really big and relevant names. There was also the overriding feeling that 9 days of non-stop festival performances inevitably water down its overall effect.

Organizers heeded the public advice and decided to make the festival even tighter by shortening it down to only 4 days. They also did away with most of the non-musical stuff meaning the EXIT's 2003 edition was its most commercial. This was also reflected through more agressive advertising presence, of which the festival had been spared up to that point through generous government funding. The ticket prices also went up.

Justifiably, the lineup was much more mass-audience friendly with act like Rollins Band, Tricky, Moloko, Stereo MC's, Dirty Vegas, Chumbawamba, Soul II Soul, Shane MacGowan, Misty In Roots, Pete Tong, Tim Deluxe, Jeff Mills along with old favourites Roni Size, Darren Emerson, Lottie, etc.

In 2004, three weeks before the festival, four of the organisers of the festival were arrested for embezzlement. It was widely assumed that there were political motives to hinder the organizers of this progressive and pro-western music festival.

In 2005, the organisers intention to dedicate the festival to the victims of Srebrenica was a thorn in the eye of the local politicians from Serbian Radical Party (SRS), who threated that this will be the last festival if its politization continue.

• EXIT Festival - official site
• EXIT Festival - travel booking
• BBC Radio 1 covering EXIT
• MTV on EXIT