Bulgaria lights up its Black Sea coast with digital art festival

Installations and projection shows illuminated buildings, fields, beaches and the sea in Tsarevo, Varvara, Ahtopol and Sinemorets. Artists from eight countries took part, combining contemporary art with the coastal landscape after sunset. The programme ran each evening from 9 p.m. to midnight and was free to the public, with video mapping, interactive installations, lasers and large‑scale light compositions transforming familiar urban and natural sites into a continuous night‑time route.bnrnews+3

In Varvara, MP‑STUDIO projected its “Time Harvest” installation onto hay bales in the meadow above the beach, while Latvian artists Those Guys Lighting presented “Divine Geometry” and other works in the same open field, turning the grassy slope into a luminous landscape.

In Ahtopol, “Endless Currents” used the shoreline and the changing surface of the sea as a projection surface, with waves and tides becoming part of the moving image.bnrnews+1

Tsarevo hosted several works, including “Gifts of the Sea”, a video mapping show on the façade of the Georgi Kondolov Community Hall, and “The Moon”, the festival’s symbol, displayed as a light installation near the Ship Fountain. Mayor Marin Kirov said the first seaside edition had drawn a record number of visitors and that the 2026 event had been expanded with more locations and installations, including the new stop in Varvara.

In Sinemorets, the light installation “For Peace” by Slovak artist sedemminut was presented in a meadow overlooking the beach, featuring glowing human figures that appeared to run through the darkness in a message of peace, freedom and artistic expression.

Organisers said the festival aims to connect people with nature while attracting visitors interested in contemporary art, building on the success of the original LUNAR festival in Sofia, which has attracted hundreds of thousands of spectators since its launch in 2022.