The festival is usually held once every two years during the last weekend of August. Rozhen is situated in the Southwest part of Bulgaria in the Rhodope Mountain. The first big festival has been organized at the Rozhen meadows in July 1898 by the priest at the church of the Sokolovtsi village. In those years the meadows were on the border between the liberated part of Bulgaria and the territories that were still part of the Ottoman empire.

     The event became for the first time a national one in the summer of 1961. Since then the authentic bag-pipe group “100 bag-pipes” is a symbol of the festival. The famous Rhodope song, selected as a message of our planet to other civilizations is often sung here by the talented Bulgarian singer Valya Balkanska for the audience of the festival.