However, one thing is the same all across the entire country - the custom of making jam-filled doughnuts.

While the biggest and most popular processions will take place in Ptuj (NW), Cernkica (SW) and Cerkno (W) on Sunday, a number of festivities will be held on Saturday.

Ljubljana will organise today the Dragon's Carnival, which will be marked by the European Green Capital 2016 project. The procession of more than 1,000 costumes will showcase the entire natural cycle and present urban gardening.

In Ptuj, one of Slovenia's oldest towns, a charitable stew-cooking competition will be organised today, an overture to the big Sunday procession, when the town of some 18,000 will be flooded by tens of thousands of carnival visitors.

While processions and other festivities will be held in almost every town and village tomorrow, the Ptuj carnival is the biggest of them all.

This year, more than 80 carnival groups from Europe and Africa will take part, as well as more than 500 kurenti, the age-old sheepskin costumes with cowbells.

The Ptuj carnival recently placed seventh among 101 greatest shows in the world by the leading guidebook publisher Lonely Planet.

One of the most popular Slovenian Shrovetide figures comes from Cerknica. The Butalci people are a caricature of Slovenians as a nation, based on satire by Fran Milčinski (1867-1932), and take over the town hall in Cerknica every year for the Shrovetide festivities.

The Cerknica procession will feature a number of different figures, including the always scary Uršula witch and Jezerko, a dragon from the nearby Cerknica Lake.