Before Pahor starts with his keynote speech at 9 PM, the ceremony will be announced with a gun salvo from Ljubljana Castle.

The president's address will be followed by artistic performances of a total of 80 participants directed by Igor Zupe and based on a short essay on the creation of Slovenia as an independent state by philosopher Peter Mlakar.

Representatives of all three branches of power, current and former ministers, MPs of all sittings of the National Assembly, councillors, academicians, business executives and cultural workers are expected to attend the ceremony.

The National Assembly will meet for a special session ahead of the ceremony, while Pahor will welcome visitors at the Presidential Palace on Sunday morning. The honorary guard will be lined up in front of the palace.

A mass for the homeland marking National Day was already held on Friday evening by Ljubljana Archbishop Stanislav Zore at St Nicholas's Cathedral. It was attended by representatives of politics and the diplomatic corps.

On 25 June, National Day, Slovenia commemorates the day when the Slovenian Assembly passed the Basic Constitutional Charter and the Declaration of Independence in 1991.

The charter was based on the December 1990 plebiscite, in which 88.2% of the voters opted to leave Yugoslavia and was the culmination of years of yearning and months of preparations to go independent.

Slovenia's declaration of independence, which actually came on 26 June, jump-started the Ten-Day War with Yugoslavia. The fighting ended on 7 July 1991, when Slovenia pledged in an EU-brokered declaration to suspend its independence efforts for three months.

When the moratorium expired in October 1991, Yugoslav People's Army troops left Slovenia and the country introduced its own currency and eventually obtained international recognition in the months thereafter.