Between 2 and 7 February 2024, the Ljubljana City Theatre is hosting the international Ruta festival for the third time, bringing together theatres of the capital cities of the countries in former Yugoslavia.

The regional theatre festival moves across the stage boards of six capital cities and writes a resounding story about connecting city theatres.

In 2019, six theatres from the territory of the former Yugoslavia signed a cooperation pledge titled Regional Theatre Union (Regionalna unija teatara) – abbreviated to Ruta. It includes the Belgrade Drama Theatre, the City Theatre Podgorica, the Drama Theatre Skopje, the Chamber Theatre 55 in Sarajevo, the Ulysses Theatre from the Brijuni, and the Ljubljana City Theatre. From this connection, the Ruta festival has evolved, during which six performances of all six participating theatres are shown in each theatre in one week. The festival starts in December in Belgrade, in February it moves to Ljubljana, in April to Podgorica, in June to Sarajevo, in August to Brijuni, and it concludes with guest performances in Skopje in October.

One of Ruta's pledges is co-production cooperation. This year, the Ljubljana City Theatre and the Belgrade Drama Theatre prepared a staging of the play The Future, directed by Žiga Divjak. The Ljubljana part of the ongoing festival will start with the performance of this play on the Main Stage of the Ljubljana City Theatre. The execution of this project was a big organizational job, as the play features six actors from Serbia and six actors from Slovenia. As they spent a lot of time together during rehearsals, which were held in both countries, strong creative and friendly bonds were forged between them and other team members.

During the festival, each theatre hosts approximately 300 theatre creators (actors, technicians and other support staff) who put on at least six performances in each city in front of 2,000 or as many as 2,500 viewers. It is an important cultural event already renowned locally and regionally.