PIF Zagreb: Pifko leads the puppets through town each September

On a Saturday morning in September, a giant puppet called Pifko leads puppeteers, children, drummers and stilt walkers down Tkalčićeva Street in Zagreb. The parade opens PIF, the International Puppet Theatre Festival (Međunarodni festival kazališta lutaka). The festival has run every year since 1968. Its programme serves children and adults, in theatre halls, parks and squares. The Travno Culture Centre (Kulturni centar Travno) in Novi Zagreb organises it.

PIF began with young Esperanto speakers from a student Esperanto club in Zagreb. The first festival ran from 6 to 8 July 1968, with four professional theatres and one amateur group. The name comes from Esperanto: Pupteatra Internacia Festivalo. At first every play had to be performed in Esperanto. Puppeteers soon switched to their own languages. A small Esperanto part of the festival still exists, the organiser says.

The festival has also travelled. Over the years it visited Sisak, Varaždin, Karlovac, Pula and Ljubljana, and it went twice to Tromsø in Norway, in 1978 and 1981. In 1991, during the war, only a third of the planned programme went ahead. The Swiss group Pannalal's Puppets and three Slovenian puppet theatres still came to Zagreb. The organiser counts more than 970 theatres from more than 55 countries since 1968. Livija Kroflin, editor of the official programme, calls PIF one of the six oldest puppet festivals in Europe.

How the festival week works

PIF runs for about a week in September. The organiser says it usually falls in the third week of the month. Each of the last three editions opened on a Friday and closed on the Thursday six days later. Each year a pre-programme started the day before. In 2026 the exhibition Lutka, maska… PIF (Puppet, mask… PIF) opened on 10 September with works from the 14th art competition for children.

The competition programme plays in theatre halls, and two juries watch it. An international jury of experts gives the main prize, the Milan Čečuk Award for the best production as a whole. Since 1988 it has carried the name of Milan Čečuk, a puppeteer, writer and historian of puppet theatre and one of the founders of PIF. A children's jury picks its own favourite among the plays for children. Further prizes go to individual work in acting, animation, direction, design and sound. The Tibor Sekelj Award comes on top: in 2026 it went to the production with the most humane message.

A free programme runs around the competition. Puppet shows play outdoors at the music pavilion in Zrinjevac Park and in the park beside the Travno Culture Centre. Workshops take in kindergarten children, school classes, teachers and seniors. Young puppeteers from schools, studios and the arts academy in Osijek show their work. The festival also holds puppet exhibitions, book presentations and screenings of puppet films.

Where it plays

• Travno Culture Centre (Kulturni centar Travno), Božidara Magovca 17, Novi Zagreb: the organiser's home and main box office, opening night and many morning shows for children.
• Zagreb Puppet Theatre (Zagrebačko kazalište lutaka), Ulica baruna Trenka 3, in the Lower Town.
• Cultural Information Centre (Kulturno informativni centar), Preradovićeva 5, and Zagreb Dance Centre (Zagrebački plesni centar), Ilica 10, both in the city centre.
• Zagreb Youth Theatre (Zagrebačko kazalište mladih), Polanec hall, Teslina 7.
• The music pavilion in Zrinjevac Park, for free open-air shows. Infozagreb also names the plateau of Mamutica in Novi Zagreb, the largest residential building in Croatia, as an open-air stage.

Choosing a show

Every performance in the programme carries an age and a language. Ages run from 3+ for the youngest to 12+ and shows for adults. Many shows are marked non-verbal or universal language, so visitors can follow them in any language. In 2026, six competition shows were marked non-verbal, three of them for adults or audiences over 12. Most adult shows started at 20:00, and many children's shows at 11:00.

Tickets

Tickets are sold online through CoreEvent, linked from pif.hr, and at the box office of the Travno Culture Centre. In 2026 that box office opened on weekdays from 10:00 to 19:00, from 1 to 17 September. Venue box offices open one hour before each show, and online sales close 30 minutes before the start. In 2026 a ticket cost 6 € for children's shows and 12 € for adult shows. Organised groups of children paid 5 €, groups of ten or more adults 8 €. Pensioners and people with disabilities paid 8 €, and the companion of a person with a disability went free. The parade and the open-air shows are free.

Getting around

Four of the indoor stages sit in the Lower Town, near Ban Jelačić Square. The Travno Culture Centre lies in Novi Zagreb, south of the Sava, so plan extra time for the trip there by public transport or taxi. In 2026 the parade started at 11:00 and ran along Tkalčićeva Street, across Ban Jelačić Square to Petar Preradović Square and back. The parade Saturday pairs well with a walk through the Upper Town; our guide to what to see in Zagreb lists the sights within walking distance.

PIF 2027

As of 20 October 2026, the organiser has announced no dates for 2027. The next edition will be the 60th, and in 2026 Infozagreb described the festival as approaching a jubilee. The last three editions ran in mid-September: 13 to 19 September 2024, 12 to 18 September 2025 and 11 to 17 September 2026. Each opened on a Friday, with the parade on the Saturday. The organiser publishes dates and the programme on pif.hr; in 2026 the programme went online on 10 July. Other dates for next year are collected in Croatia's festivals in 2027.

PIF 2026 in review

The 59th PIF ran from 11 to 17 September 2026. Thirteen theatres and art groups came from nine countries: Croatia, France, Spain, Uruguay, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Serbia, Romania and Italy. The festival opened at the Travno Culture Centre with Pierre's Last Day (Posljednji Pierrov dan) by the company Deraïdenz from Avignon. The piece follows a lonely man who arrives in an unknown village in midwinter. It is performed without words, with handmade puppets and original music, HRT reported.

Pifko's parade went through the centre on Saturday 12 September at 11:00. The programme listed workshops for kindergartens, schools, teachers and seniors, plus free open-air shows at Zrinjevac and in Travno. The juries announced the awards on 17 September. The Milan Čečuk Grand Prix for the best production went to Loops and Hoops (Drugovi i krugovi) by Dominik Migač, Marta Migač and Jan Pichler from Prague. The children's jury chose Life (Život) by the Javier Aranda company from Spain. Pierre's Last Day won the Tibor Sekelj Award for the most humane message. After the award ceremony, the programme scheduled Pinocchio (Pinokio) by Kazališna družina Pinklec.

Earlier editions

In 2025 the 58th PIF ran from 12 to 18 September, with 16 shows from 12 countries in the official programme, Infozagreb reported. The Milan Čečuk prize went to Klik by Trukitrek from Spain. The children's jury chose Hanging by a Thread (Visjeti o koncu) by Di Filippo Marionette from Italy. In 2024 the 57th edition ran from 13 to 19 September with 17 productions from 11 countries, among them Japan and Georgia, HRT reported. Deputy mayor Luka Korlaet cut the opening ribbon at the Travno Culture Centre.