Hot-air balloon flight in Slovakia: how it works and 3 tips for your first time

You can plan a hot-air balloon flight in Slovakia, but the weather always has the final say. Balloons fly only early in the morning or before sunset, so count on an early alarm and a flexible date. I’ve flown over Košice and below the Tatras, and my advice is to expect the trip back from the launch site to take longer than the flight itself.

Can you actually plan a hot-air balloon flight in Slovakia in advance? Partly, yes, but the final word always comes from the weather, not the calendar. I learned that twice in one year.

In May I flew over Košice during the Balloon Fiesta (Balónová fiesta), and a few months later I was standing in a basket at the Slovak Balloon Cup below the Tatras. One flight started in fog that suddenly turned into a clear morning high above the clouds; the other was in perfectly clear weather, with the whole of the High Tatras (Vysoké Tatry) visible from above. Both flights had one thing in common: they took off early in the morning or just before sunset.

That’s no coincidence, and it’s not just a pilots’ habit. There’s a simple physical explanation, and I’ll get to it below. But first, let’s look at how a balloon flight is planned, what to expect and what to prepare for if you want to book one too.

How booking a balloon flight works and when it gets confirmed

My very first balloon flight was in Cappadocia in Turkey, and my three flights in Slovakia since then worked in exactly the same way. You book a balloon flight in Slovakia like any other experience: you pick a location, buy a voucher or a specific date, and wait for the pilot to confirm. The difference from an ordinary trip is that the final yes usually comes only the day before, or on the morning of the flight, once the pilot has checked the latest forecast. If the weather doesn’t play along, the flight moves to another date free of charge. So it’s not money lost, just an experience postponed.

• Tip from Milan At the Slovak Balloon Cup, up to seven launches were scheduled over five days, in the morning and in the late afternoon. So even if the weather spoils one flight, your chances of a replacement slot at the same event are high. That’s exactly how I ended up flying twice.

How long people have been flying balloons in Slovakia: a bit of history

A balloon flight feels like a modern experience, but it’s actually one of the oldest ways of flying there is. The Montgolfier brothers gave the first public demonstration of a hot-air balloon in Annonay, France, on 4 June 1783. That balloon had no crew; a few months later, over Paris, there were people on board. Less well known is that Slovakia was hardly behind at all. On 25 May 1784, less than a year after the Montgolfiers’ first flight, a home-built hot-air balloon took off right in Bratislava.

It launched from what is now Freedom Square (Námestie slobody) and landed in the Little Carpathians (Malé Karpaty). That puts Bratislava among the very first cities in the world where someone tried exactly what pilots do today near the Tatras or over Košice. In the east of the country, ballooning has its exact date too. The first crewed balloon flight over Košice took place in June 1906, when a balloon called Turul was brought all the way from Budapest. It made a test flight from near the railway station and later took off again from the playground on what is now Štúrova Street.

Exactly 120 years later, in May 2026, Košice hosted the 29th Balloon Fiesta, and I got to go. It’s one of the oldest balloon events in Slovakia. Over five days, dozens of balloons from several countries in Europe and around the world take to the sky. Entry is free; you only pay for the flight itself.

Slovak Balloon Cup in Veľká Lomnica

The Slovak Balloon Cup is a different kind of event. It’s not only about sightseeing flights: it’s an official international ballooning competition approved by the FAI (Fédération Aéronautique Internationale).

It takes place below the Tatras in Veľká Lomnica. Pilots from dozens of countries take part, and most of them go straight on from there to the World Championships. So my experience there felt a little different from a regular sightseeing flight: I saw up close how pilots prepare when, a few weeks later, they’ll be flying at the highest level.

Why balloons fly only in the morning and evening

This is probably the question I heard most often from people around me whenever I mentioned a hot-air balloon flight in Slovakia. The answer is simple: it’s about the air, not the pilots. During the day the ground heats up unevenly. Over fields, tarmac or rocks, warm air rises at different speeds and creates currents that are hard to predict for a big, slow balloon.

Shortly after sunrise and just before sunset, the air is at its most stable. The temperature of the ground changes slowly and the wind is at its weakest of the whole day. That’s when a pilot can judge much more precisely where the flight will go and where it will be safe to land.

The second thing I only understood once I was in the basket: you can’t steer a balloon like a plane. The pilot controls only the altitude. The burner heats the air and the balloon climbs; let the air cool and the balloon sinks. The direction depends entirely on the wind at that altitude.

That’s why experienced pilots change altitude during the flight. The wind in the higher and lower layers often blows in different directions, and this is how they can partly steer the flight. We watched exactly that at the Slovak Balloon Cup: our pilot tried one altitude after another until he found a current that carried us the right way.

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My balloon flights over Košice and below the High Tatras

My first flight was in May, during the Balloon Fiesta in Košice. Until then I’d only known the city from the ground, from Main Street (Hlavná ulica) and St Elizabeth Cathedral, and suddenly I saw all of it at once: the lanes, the roofs and the edges of town where the houses fade into fields. A balloon moves slowly and quietly; the only sound is the occasional roar of the burner. I’d never seen a city like that before, not from a plane and not from a tower.

The second experience was different in character and in weather. At the Slovak Balloon Cup I flew twice. On the first morning there was fog down by the ground, exactly the kind of weather in which I’d have expected the flight to be cancelled. Instead we took off straight into it, and a few minutes later we were above it. The fog suddenly became a solid white surface below the basket, with clear morning sun shining above it.

That’s a moment you can’t plan or book; you just have to be lucky. The next day, by contrast, was completely clear. I saw the whole panorama of the High Tatras from above without a single cloud. It was a completely different kind of experience, more about the view than the atmosphere.

What to watch out for on a balloon flight

If you’re buying a balloon flight for the first time, it pays to know a few things in advance so that nothing catches you off guard.

• Tip from Milan I’d buy a voucher with a longer validity rather than a slot on one specific day. The flight is only confirmed according to the weather anyway, and it’s better to have room for a replacement date.
• Tip from Milan I wore sporty clothes and sturdy shoes to the launch site. You stand in the basket, and you can expect a gentle bump on landing.
• Tip from Milan I’d allow a good three to four hours for the whole thing, from meeting the crew to being driven back to your car, even though the flight itself usually lasts around an hour.
• Tip from Milan After landing I got the traditional first-flight baptism, a symbolic welcome into the ranks of balloonists with a toast. It’s part of almost every flight in Slovakia, so leave some time for it.

A balloon flight also works as a gift. A voucher is usually valid for a longer period, so the person who gets it can pick a suitable date and weather themselves. If you’re planning the flight as part of a bigger trip, for example to the Tatras or around Košice, I’d put it at the start of your stay rather than on the last day, precisely because the weather is so uncertain. If the flight gets moved, you’ll still have time left for a replacement date.

Three tips from Milan Bez Mapy before your first flight

1. Don’t bring a big backpack. With a balloon you often end up standing in a meadow or somewhere you reach by off-road vehicle, and there’s simply no room in the basket for big luggage, or for worrying about clean shoes. A small backpack or bag you can keep by your feet is ideal. Also secure your phone, glasses and other small things well, because the wind can be surprisingly strong after take-off. If you land in a field, you’ll get dirty like I did.
2. Don’t look for the view only during the flight. The most interesting moments can come before take-off and right after landing. While the balloon is being inflated, you watch a huge sheet of fabric slowly turn into a flying machine, and after landing it’s often packed up right there on the spot. If you can, don’t leave as soon as you climb out of the basket.
3. Expect not to know exactly where you’ll land. A balloon has no ordinary engine and no steering wheel, so the pilot relies largely on the different wind directions at different altitudes. That’s why the flight can end somewhere completely different from where you expected. A practical point: don’t plan to leave the launch site right after the flight. The organiser usually drives you back, but the whole process can take longer than the flight itself.

This article was written in cooperation with Balon.sk, the organiser behind both the Balloon Fiesta in Košice and the Slovak Balloon Cup below the Tatras.

Happy travels, and give a balloon flight in Slovakia a try!

Milan Bez Mapy