MENT Ljubljana 2026: The 12th Edition Is All About Bold Sounds and New Discoveries
The music discovery festival and conference MENT Ljubljana has unveiled the music program for its 12th edition, taking place from February 18 to February 21 at various locations around Ljubljana.
The upcoming edition, featuring 79 acts from 26 countries and expected to draw at least 600 music professionals from Slovenia and abroad, brings the boldest and most exciting curated program yet.
This year’s lineup includes the Palestinian duo Shabjdeed & Al Nather, hailed as revivers of the Arabic hip-hop scene, the loud American punk-rap duo Ho99o9, the mystical dub-dance trio from London Holy Tongue, the percussion visionary Valentina Magaletti and the Dutch pixie-pop standard-bearer Min Taka. The electronic part of the festival, CE/MENT, which also includes a dedicated conference program, brings DJ sets and live performances from some of the most talked-about names on the international scene, such as Skee Mask, aya x MFO, Polygonia and Rey Colino.
Once again there’s a strong focus on Slovenian acts from a range of genres – from pop (Hana Fatur, Liamere), jazz (Mrk), new-wave chanson (iT / Irena Tomažin), folk (Nika Prusnik & bratje Poljanec) and hip-hop (Neeko) to all kinds of guitar music (Grunt, mal pre mal, INSAN, zbrucz, Falesia).
The local electronic scene will be well represented too – from DJs (Lottie & Lerro, MMali b2b Obscur, Sahara Transport Services) to live acts (SWAI, Kathron, tachyon), ambient concerts (Januš Aleš Luznar, Oka, Lifecutter) and more experimental sonic sessions (Hexenbrutal, Sujevera, mala roza muca & pixel bambi).
The MENT Conference returns to Kino Šiška and M Hotel on February 19 and February 20. Expect plenty of interviews, panel discussions, mentoring sessions and speed networking with artists, music professionals and innovators from every corner of the music industry.
We’re announcing interviews with one of the most versatile percussionists around right now, Valentina Magaletti, a member of Moin, Holy Tongue and numerous other projects and a collaborator of musicians like Nicolas Jaar, Thurston Moore, Bat for Lashes, Philip Selway (Radiohead) and more; Mo Dafa, who handles the program at London’s legendary contemporary music venue Cafe OTO; the founder of the Le Guess Who? festival, Bob Van Heur; the Amsterdam DJ, head of the label Kalahari Oyster Cult and the One Eye Witness distribution, Rey Colino; and one of the leading visual and stage designers in experimental electronic music, Marcel Weber (MFO).
The conference program also features debates on the newly founded Slovenian music export office Music Slovenia, the 60th anniversary of the legendary club MKNŽ in Ilirska Bistrica, self-organizing tours of the Balkans, and many other topics.
The conference guests also include Shawn Reynaldo (First Floor), Deniz Everling (Bandcamp), Darek Mazzone (KEXP, SAMA), David Arias (Primavera Sound), Filip Koštalek (Colours of Ostrava), Oskar Štrajn (ESNS), Luca Jacob (WOMEX), Cecilie Kragesteen Eickworth (Roskilde Festival) and many more.
Come discover this year’s program with the help of the festival playlist.
Tickets are available here.
The conference program also covers topics like organizing your own tours of the Balkans, administrative tips for international touring, funding sources at the European level, how the music industry works in the Balkans, and geographic discrimination against music from Central and Eastern Europe. On the streaming platform Spotify, the talk will be about the newly founded Music Slovenia office for exporting Slovenian music.
