A group of barefoot men and women dancing in a large circle of live embers, while hypnotic music beats a rhythm that gets under your skin and into your blood: Firewalker dances in Bulgaria are a spectacular rite to watch. A tradition whose origins are lost in time, the nestinari dances almost disappeared in the 20th century, but were eventually revived, albeit modernised, to appeal to a modern audience hungry for Instagrammable and TikTokable "authentic" experiences.

When can you see real nestinari dances?

You may have stumbled across a performance of the rite as tourist entertainment in busy seaside resorts or even in traditional restaurants in Sofia. The real thing takes place on a specific date in a specific place: 3 June, in the village of Balgari, deep in the Strandzha mountains.

Balgari is the only place that preserves the tradition of firewalking, which until the early 20th century was practised in several villages by both Bulgarians and Greeks, and was used to celebrate a plethora of spring and summer religious festivals. The nestinari dances in Balgari are dedicated to the patron saints of the rite, Ss Constantine and Helena.

The dances have become very popular in recent years and attract thousands of visitors. Plan your trip in advance, book a room in Malko Tarnovo or in the surrounding villages, and on arrival expect long queues of cars looking for non-existent parking spaces.

What to expect when you arrive in Balgari?

Police checkpoints, dozens of cars parked on the side of the road, folk music blaring from loudspeakers and crowds of people squeezed between stalls selling candyfloss, kepabcheta and cheap Made-in-China toys. In short, the atmosphere is like that of any Bulgarian village during a country fair – if you don't count the large wood-burning circle in the centre of Balgari.

As dusk falls, the wood is reduced to embers. A man with a rake will methodically arrange them in a large circle. By this time, you should have secured a place by the fire – otherwise you will have to watch the nestinari from the big screen that has recently been installed over the village square.

Then, out of the darkness, you will hear a strange music: a drum and a bagpipe repeating a simple but hypnotic melody ad infinitum. The crowd will part and a group of men and women in traditional dress will appear by the fire circle. These are the nestinari – people who claim to be answering a supernatural call to dance into the embers.

They will stand there for some time, praying and going into a trance-like state. Then, one by one, they would enter the fire circle – barefoot, lost in themselves, sometimes carrying an icon of Ss Constantine and Helena.

This goes on for about half an hour. Then the dancers leave the embers to the rather excited crowd. Some people from the audience take off their shoes and also walk over the dying embers, with varying degrees of success and burns.

How do nestinari not get burnt?

The nestinari are famous for not getting burnt or injured while dancing in the embers. The phenomenon has yet to be explained, but it probably has something to do with the peculiar way in which the dancers step on the embers. They take quick, short steps and often shuffle, thus reducing the access of oxygen between the embers and their skin and reducing the risk of burning.

The nestinari have a different explanation. They believe that Ss Constantine and Helena will protect them in the fire.

Why do they dance in living embers?

No one knows for sure. The tradition is most likely of pagan origin and is thousands of years old. According to the most popular hypothesis, the modern nestinari recreate an ancient Thracian rite performed by priests of the nameless Great Goddess and Great God. The two deities had created the entire universe in an incestuous relationship and manifested themselves as Light and Darkness. When Christianity arrived in the Strandzha, around the 5th-6th century, the old gods did not disappear at all. They simply merged with a pair of saints who seemed to fit the bill – Emperor Constantine the Great and his mother Helena.

Firewalking is spectacular, but it is not the only thing that the nestinari do – their rites are much more elaborate. On the morning of 3 June, for example, they solemnly carry the icons of Saints Constantine and Helena from the chapel where they are kept all year round to a sacred spring in the woods. There, they "bathe" the icons and then change their "clothes"

The nestinari dances are now presented as an unbroken tradition, but this is not the case. At the beginning of the 20th century, the tradition suffered a severe blow – the Strandzha Greeks left their homes and villages and moved to Greece, as part of a large-scale exchange of populations to ensure peace in the Eastern Balkans after the First World War. A few decades later, Bulgaria became a Communist country and the practice of firewalking was actively discouraged as a "dark superstition from the past". The last genuine nestinari died of old age in the 1960s.

A decade later, with the rise of nationalist sentiment in Communist Bulgaria, interest in the tradition was revived and eventually became a spectacle for tourists in resorts and restaurants.

The Church and the firewalkers have been at odds over whether the nestinari rites belong to Christianity, at least since the 19th century. The nestinari have always considered themselves to be devout Christians, but the clergy insists the ritual is pagan in both origin and spirit. The latest rebuke came in 2025, when the local bishop condemned firewalking in Balgari, urging participants to stop using icons in dances and visiting the church. However, according to historians, the nestinari are the rightful owners of the icons and may use them as they wish

The Balgari nestinari dances also revived. The modern version that you will see on 3 June differs from the original in many and often crucial details – a sign of the changes of time, reflecting the depopulation of the Strandzha in the last century, the loss of local communities and the replacement of meaningful rites and traditions with their tourist-friendly versions.

Still, the sight of barefoot people crossing the glowing circle of embers, under the starry sky over Balgari and the heavy, monotonous melody of the drum and the bagpipe, will leave you awestruck. 

A chapel to Ss Constantine and Helena deep into the Strandzha forest, at a sacred place called Vlahov Dol. Nestinari believed that this place gave them the ability to dance on hot coals, enter a trance and predict the future while dancing