Surova

New Year by the old calendar

Surova — also called Surva or Sirova — is, for the villages of the Pernik region in western Bulgaria, the most anticipated feast of the year, a masquerade ritual meant to ensure a happy passage from the old year to the new. On the first night, masquerade groups of survakari, made up of men, women and children, put on their masks and costumes and head for the village centre, where they light fires and tease and play with the watching crowd. Some take on special roles: the leader, the newlyweds, the priest and the bear.

Early the next morning the groups walk through the village visiting houses. They ritually marry young couples, and the bear “mauls” people to give them good health. Hosts wait for them with a ritual meal and gifts, and after the feast the survakari share out the gifts, often donating the money collected to orphans and the poor. According to UNESCO, whole families spend the year collecting materials for masks and costumes, with adults teaching young people how to make them.

The Surva festival in Pernik

The town of Pernik also hosts the International Festival of Masquerade Games, Surva, over the last weekend of January. First held in 1966, it brings together masquerade groups from most of the villages of the region, from elsewhere in Bulgaria and from abroad — more than 12,000 participants in both 2024 and 2025. The kukeri, as the masked dancers are called in much of Bulgaria, wear wooden masks with horns, beaks and teeth, costumes of animal fur and heavy bells on their belts, whose clanging is meant to frighten away evil spirits. Nineteenth-century scholars traced the tradition to the ancient Thracians, but modern research sees it as part of a wider Balkan mumming tradition.