Montenegro’s gaming and esports community is making the case for a more ambitious national economic strategy, arguing that competitive gaming, software development and technology events could become a new export-oriented industry while helping the country extend its tourism season beyond the traditional summer peak.
Filip Šoć, president of the Electronic Sports Association of Montenegro and one of the founders of the Montenegro Future Festival, believes gaming should no longer be treated as a niche recreational activity. In his view, it can become one of the pillars of Montenegro’s digital economy, connect the country more closely with its younger diaspora and create an international events business capable of bringing visitors to coastal cities before and after the main holiday season.
The commercial argument starts with the scale of the global market. Broader estimates that include video games, mobile gaming, hardware, esports, advertising and associated digital services place the gaming economy at more than $250 billion a year. Mobile in-app spending alone was estimated at almost $130 billion in 2025, while gaming remains one of the most globally distributed forms of digital entertainment.
Montenegro will not capture a meaningful share of that market simply by organising tournaments. Its opportunity lies in combining several smaller but mutually reinforcing activities: game development, testing and localisation, esports events, production and streaming, professional training camps, conferences, digital education and technology-led tourism.
That model is more credible for a small country than an attempt to build a large domestic consumer market. Montenegro has a population of little more than 600,000, but digital products can be developed locally and sold globally without the transport, warehousing and border costs associated with physical exports. A small studio with a commercially successful mobile, PC or console title can generate foreign revenue far beyond what its domestic market would normally support.
The same principle applies to esports. Montenegro cannot compete with the arena capacity of major European capitals, but it can position cities such as Bar, Budva, Podgorica and Tivat as compact destinations for tournaments, team boot camps, executive summits and gaming festivals. The competitive advantage would come from the combination of event infrastructure, accommodation, international accessibility, coastal appeal and relatively short distances between airports, hotels and venues.
The Montenegro Future Festival, held in Bar from April 24 to 26, 2026, offered an early demonstration of that approach. The programme combined esports tournaments with the World eFootball Cup, Mediterranean competitions in eFootball and Tekken, the European Gaming Summit, artificial-intelligence and blockchain discussions, educational programmes, an exhibition area and several mobile and console competitions.
Organisers reported participation and representation from more than 60 countries, more than 120 speakers and approximately 500 international guests, with total attendance expected to reach about 5,000 people over three days. Companies and international organisations associated with the programme included names such as Alibaba, Tencent, Moonton, ESL, BLAST, the International Esports Federation, the European Esports Federation and NASEF.
The aggregate market value of the multinational companies represented at such events may reach extraordinarily high figures, but that should not be confused with investment committed to Montenegro. The relevant economic measure is whether participation develops into supplier contracts, local employment, sponsorships, studio investments, training programmes or repeat events. International visibility has value only when it produces a durable commercial pipeline.
Bar offers a useful test case. The city is traditionally associated with the Port of Bar, logistics, maritime activity and summer tourism. A recurring technology festival held in April brings a different category of visitor at a time when hotel occupancy, restaurant demand and local spending are below their seasonal peaks.
A three-day festival attended by several hundred international delegates will not transform the national economy. A calendar of gaming, technology and creative-industry events extending from March to June and again from September to November could, however, create a more meaningful hospitality market. Hotels would gain additional occupied room nights, airlines and ground-transport operators would see off-season demand, while venues, production companies, restaurants and local service providers would receive business outside July and August.
Montenegro recorded 2.61 million tourist arrivals and 15.59 million overnight stays in 2024, with foreign visitors accounting for about 96% of overnight stays. Approximately 94% of those nights were concentrated on the Adriatic coast. The scale is impressive relative to the country’s population, but it also reveals a structural weakness: tourism remains geographically concentrated and heavily dependent on a short period of peak demand.
Gaming-related events could support the shift from volume-based summer tourism towards higher-value specialist travel. Professional players, production crews, speakers, sponsors and technology executives generally travel outside school-holiday periods and spend on accommodation, technical services, local transport and food rather than only on beach-related consumption.
The tourism effect would remain secondary to the more important goal of building a domestic digital industry. Montenegro’s ICT sector has already expanded well beyond its former position as an extension of the telecommunications market. Earlier sector analysis identified more than €700 million in annual revenue, close to €90 million in profit, almost 9,600 employees and around 2,860 registered businesses across the broader ICT economy.
The figures include telecommunications, equipment distribution and a large number of small or inactive entities, meaning they cannot be read as the direct economic contribution of software development. They nevertheless show that Montenegro has accumulated a larger technology base than its size might suggest.
Major operators already present in the country include Crnogorski Telekom, controlled by Hrvatski Telekom and ultimately linked to Deutsche Telekom; One Montenegro, part of Hungary’s 4iG group; m:tel, within Telekom Srbija; and Telemach Montenegro, part of United Group. International and regional technology companies such as Huawei, Ericsson, Siemens, Comtrade and Saga also contribute to the market’s technical and corporate base.
Gaming could create a higher-margin layer above that connectivity infrastructure. The most attractive activities are not the retail sale of equipment or the hosting of occasional tournaments, but intellectual-property ownership, game publishing, specialist software engineering, animation, visual effects, sound production, cybersecurity, payment integration and live-content production.
These activities have different capital requirements from hotels, roads or energy projects. A small development studio may require initial financing of €250,000–€1 million, depending on the size of the team, production cycle and intended platform. A more ambitious international title can absorb several million euros before commercial release, with no guarantee of success.
The financing model is therefore closer to venture capital than conventional bank lending. Banks are reluctant to lend against unproven intellectual property because there is little physical collateral and revenues are uncertain. Early-stage studios normally depend on founders’ capital, publisher advances, private investors, grants or convertible financing. Once a title has built recurring revenue, the company becomes more suitable for traditional working-capital and expansion facilities.
Montenegro’s investment policy would need to reflect that distinction. General tax incentives may attract company registrations, but registrations alone do not produce a functioning gaming cluster. Sustainable growth requires experienced developers, producers, designers, product managers and commercial executives who can take a game from concept through testing, launch, user acquisition and monetisation.
Education is therefore the central constraint. Esports may attract young people to technology, but playing games and producing them are entirely different economic activities. The development side requires mathematics, programming, 2D and 3D design, animation, data analytics, artificial intelligence, sound engineering, marketing and intellectual-property management.
Šoć has argued for closer cooperation between schools, universities, gaming organisations and international education networks. The practical model would include licensed trainers, digital courses, university competitions, game-development laboratories and partnerships between educational institutions and operating companies. Esports can function as an entry point into science, technology, engineering and mathematics, provided the programme progresses beyond competition into accredited skills.
Montenegro’s diaspora could help close part of the experience gap. A younger generation of Montenegrins living in Western Europe and North America already works in software, creative industries, finance and digital marketing. Gaming events provide a less formal way to reconnect these professionals with the domestic economy through mentoring, investment, remote collaboration and company formation.
That relationship would be commercially more valuable than treating the diaspora solely as a source of remittances or summer property demand. A developer working in Berlin, London, Stockholm or Los Angeles can contribute market access, publishing contacts and technical knowledge that remain scarce in a small domestic ecosystem.
The country also needs a clearer distinction between gaming, esports and gambling. Video-game development and organised digital competition should not be placed in the same policy category as online betting or casino operations. Blurring the sectors complicates regulation, weakens access to education and innovation funding and creates reputational problems with international partners.
A credible national framework would need rules covering player protection, tournament integrity, intellectual-property rights, taxation of prizes, data protection, cybersecurity and safeguards for minors. The health dimension must also be addressed through age-appropriate participation, time-management standards and education on problematic gaming behaviour.
Event economics require similar discipline. Public support should be linked to measurable outcomes such as international room nights, foreign attendance, media reach, local procurement, sponsorship income, training delivered and business contracts generated. A festival that depends permanently on municipal funding without producing repeat demand is a cultural event, not an economic-development instrument.
The experience of Bar Municipality and the Bar Tourism Organisation, which have supported the Montenegro Future Festival, provides a starting point for this measurement. The next stage would involve multi-year scheduling, transparent performance indicators and coordination with hotels, airlines, airports, universities and national tourism institutions.
Transport capacity remains one of the practical limitations. Large international tournaments depend on reliable air connections, predictable visa procedures, sufficient broadband redundancy and technically suitable venues. Montenegro’s two airports handled growing passenger volumes, but seasonal congestion and limited winter routes reduce the country’s ability to host major events throughout the year.
Venue infrastructure is another constraint. The type of facility required for esports is different from a traditional congress hall. It needs high-capacity electricity supply, redundant fibre connections, controlled latency, broadcast spaces, production rooms, secure player areas and adaptable audience seating. These specifications should be incorporated into the design or refurbishment of future conference and multipurpose venues rather than added temporarily at high cost for every event.
A serious gaming strategy would also need to recognise the volatility of the global industry. The sector has recorded strong long-term revenue growth, but recent years have included studio closures, delayed projects and tens of thousands of job losses among major international developers and publishers. Consumer attention is concentrated around a relatively small number of established titles, while the cost of acquiring users has risen sharply.
Montenegro’s strongest position is therefore unlikely to be a direct attempt to compete with global publishing groups. A more realistic route begins with service exports, smaller independent titles, mobile applications, specialist art and engineering teams, esports production and regional events. These activities can build experience and foreign-client relationships before domestic companies assume the much greater financial risk of publishing their own large projects.
The potential is substantial but not automatically worth billions to the Montenegrin economy. The global market provides the addressable opportunity; Montenegro still has to build the companies, skills and intellectual property required to capture it. The value would emerge through a portfolio of export-oriented studios, recurring events, specialist education and off-season visitor spending rather than from any single tournament.
For an economy still heavily exposed to coastal property development and seasonal tourism, that portfolio has strategic merit. Gaming combines scalable digital exports with the assets Montenegro already possesses: international tourism visibility, compact cities, improving connectivity and a young multilingual workforce. The Montenegro Future Festival has shown that Bar can attract a global technology audience. Converting that audience into year-round companies, contracts and skilled employment is the industrial phase that now matters.
