Bulgaria's Black Sea coast lit up by digital art festival
Coastal towns along Bulgaria's Black Sea, including Tsarevo, Varvara, Ahtopol and Sinemorets, hosted a free nightly light and video-mapping festival featuring artists from eight countries, among them Latvia's Those Guys Lighting.
A digital light and projection festival transformed several towns along Bulgaria's Black Sea coast this month, turning buildings, meadows, beaches and the sea itself into nighttime canvases. The free programme ran each evening from 9 p.m. to midnight in Tsarevo, Varvara, Ahtopol and Sinemorets, featuring video mapping, interactive installations, lasers and large-scale light compositions that formed a continuous after-dark route along the coast.
Works across four locations
In Varvara, MP-STUDIO projected its installation "Time Harvest" onto hay bales in a meadow above the beach. In the same field, Latvian collective Those Guys Lighting presented "Divine Geometry" alongside other pieces, turning the grassy slope into a glowing landscape. In Ahtopol, the installation "Endless Currents" used the shoreline and the sea's shifting surface as a projection screen, so that waves and tides became part of the moving imagery.
Tsarevo hosted several works, including "Gifts of the Sea", a video-mapping show projected onto 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 town's first seaside edition drew a record number of visitors, and that the 2026 event expanded with additional locations and installations, including the new stop in Varvara.
In Sinemorets, Slovak artist sedemminut presented the light installation "For Peace" in a meadow overlooking the beach, showing glowing human figures appearing to run through the darkness as a message about peace, freedom and artistic expression. Organisers said the festival is meant to connect visitors with nature while drawing in audiences interested in contemporary art, building on the success of the original LUNAR festival in Sofia, which has drawn hundreds of thousands of spectators since it launched in 2022.
