Outdoor advertising in Vitsebsk

The catalogue offers 8 formats, and Billboards carries the most faces — 116. Sizes come from annex 3 to decision No. 204:

• billboard — bottom edge of the face at least 3 metres above the roadway;
• light poster on a plot of land — up to 1.2 × 1.8 m, top edge no higher than 2.3 m;
• bracket sign — no more than a metre either way, at least 10 m apart;
• extender — no more than five per cent of the face;
• types newly defined in clause 6: a gobo projector with two addresses at once, the projector and the surface it lights, a multipillar, a scroller and a stele.

Vitebsk sets no citywide spacing between free-standing structures, and illumination after dark is mandatory.

Centrality here is set by law: annex 1 to decision No. 204 splits the city into three territory categories, and the category drives the reducing coefficient on the city charge. The top one covers:

• Pobedy, Lenina, Svobody, Privokzalnaya, Proletarskaya, 1000-letiya g. Vitebska (Millennium of Vitebsk) and Smolenskaya squares;
• Moskovsky, Pobedy, Frunze, Chernyakhovskogo, Stroiteley and Generala Lyudnikova avenues;
• Kosmonavtov, Generala Beloborodova, Suvorova, Pushkina, Tolstogo, Kalinina, Sovetskaya, Gogolya, Kirova, Lenina, Chkalova, Zamkovaya, Krylova, Yanki Kupaly, Gorovtsa and Kommunisticheskaya streets.

The first category is the territory carrying city public transport routes; the second is everything else. What is particular to Vitebsk is that the top category also holds the streets of the historic core, where a stricter heritage regime applies.

The billboard is not banned here as a type of structure, but no new site for one opens inside a buffer zone: annex 4 to decision No. 204 allows a free-standing billboard or prism board only where an earlier structure stood and was dismantled. The rest of annex 4 runs:

• billboard, prism board and multimedia structure — no more than 3 × 6 metres;
• light poster and pylon — no more than 1.8 × 1.2 metres;
• wall-mounted structures and banners are not allowed at all on heritage objects or on buildings of the historic fabric;
• a sign may only be separate letters with no backing panel, no taller than 0.5 metres;
• poster stands and A-boards are banned in the buffer zone of the heritage object named in the act as the “Historic centre of Vitebsk”.

The boundary of that regime is drawn by the State List of Historic and Cultural Values: by the executive committee's own count Vitebsk holds 233 such entries.

The permit comes from the Vitebsk city executive committee — without it no outdoor structure may be installed — while applications, contracts, the permit register and dismantling go through the municipal enterprise Vitebskreklama.

The artwork is cleared separately, as administrative procedure 9.14 under Council of Ministers resolution No. 561 of 6 October 2021: an application plus the design, A4 and in colour, in two paper copies or as a file. The term is 5 working days, or 15 if other state bodies must be asked; there is no fee and the clearance never expires. Under the law “On advertising” it holds across the whole region, so the same artwork works in Orsha, Polotsk and Novopolotsk.

Advertising runs in Belarusian and/or Russian; a foreign language is allowed only alongside them and only where the text is identical in content and presentation. The law “On advertising” also bans superlatives that cannot be evidenced, bans comparative advertising as such, and bans words like “gift”, “free” and “0 roubles” where the service is in fact paid for. On top of the law comes a city list — twenty-three signs of harm to the architectural appearance, listed in annex 5 to decision No. 204. A structure is refused if it is:

• a sign made of banner fabric;
• a prism board or other mechanical image change on an apartment building;
• paint or film over more than half of a shop window;
• any placement in gardens, parks and public squares, on lamp posts or on living plants;
• an A-board on a pavement narrower than three metres, or within the red lines of streets of any category.

Digital surfaces in the catalogue: 10 out of 146. A screen lets the creative and the schedule change mid-campaign; a printed board carries one creative for the whole term.

Vitebsk both rewards digital media and restricts them. Annex 2 to decision No. 204 grants a reducing coefficient to screens, multimedia structures, multipillars, scrollers and rotating boards, while clause 10 obliges the operator to fit any structure carrying sound or an image with protection against unauthorised access. Pulsing illumination, flashes and sharply contrasting frames without a smooth rise and fall of brightness are not approved.

In July the centre belongs to the international arts festival “Slavic Bazaar in Vitebsk”: resolution No. 33 of the Ministry of Culture of 31 March 2026 fixes that the festival is held annually and that its period is July, while the exact dates are set each year by the national organising committee.

For placement, the city's working regime in those days matters more. The 35th festival ran on 16–19 July 2026 and drew 8,350 accredited guests from 52 countries; from 14 to 20 July transport around Svobody Square, Frunze Avenue and Lenina and Zamkovaya streets ran until two in the morning, and Kalinina and Lenina were closed for processions — the very addresses in the top territory category.