The Balkan Cross Country Championships has since 1958 been an annual regional international competition in cross country running amongst athletes from the Balkans.
It forms part of the Balkan Games, the latter an event to encourage the relations amongst the participating nations surrounding the Mediterranean Sea and it traces its history back to 1940.
[1] The first edition in 1940 was a men's only competition; Josip Kotnik of Yugoslavia was the inaugural winner.
A 15-year hiatus followed with the onset of World War II and the regional event was reborn in 1955.
There was another hiatus to follow for two years but the 1958 edition, where Yugoslavia's Olympic medalist and International Cross Country champion Franjo Mihalić was victorious, marked the full establishment of the competition; the Balkan championship was contested annually thereafter.