Red Bull Cliff Diving and Kotor: The Boats That Had Orlando Duque on Board

Orlando Duque is cliff diving royalty: 13 world titles, the first-ever overall Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series champion, and today the Series' sports director. He's also stood on the ledge above Kotor's Blue Cave — Plava Špilja — for a cliff-diving exhibition, with two of our boats holding position in the water directly below as safety and water support.

Here's the part worth getting right before anything else: the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series itself doesn't stop in Kotor. The 2026 calendar's Balkan leg is Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, on 31 July and 1 August — a different city, a different fixture, a genuine World Series competition with a long-running Mostar connection of its own (divers have gone off the Stari Most bridge there for years, and Duque has competed there himself). What happened in Kotor is a separate, smaller story: an exhibition dive at the Blue Cave, not a Series stop, with our fleet doing the unglamorous, entirely necessary job of holding safe position under the jump.

Where the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series actually happens

If you're searching for where to watch the Series live in this part of the world, Mostar is the answer, not Kotor. The Series has returned to Mostar's Stari Most bridge year after year, and 2026 was no exception — divers went off the bridge on 31 July and 1 August, with Duque's own competitive history at that exact event (he's dived there himself in past seasons) part of what makes the Mostar stop one of the Series' signature fixtures. Kotor never hosted, and isn't scheduled to host, a Series competition date.

The scene at the Blue Cave

What Kotor got instead was a cliff-diving exhibition inside the Blue Cave itself — the same sea cave our Blue Cave & Bay of Kotor tours visit every day, its narrow mouth opening onto a chamber where sunlight bounces off white limestone and turns the water underneath an almost unnatural electric blue. Duque climbed one of the cave's ledges, alongside Evald Krnić, a Balkan and Montenegrin champion diver in his own right, and jumped — not for World Series points, but for the exhibition itself and the footage it produced.

Underneath the jump line, two of our boats held position on the water: one to mark the safe landing zone, one for the pickup once the dive was done. That's water support work — unglamorous, entirely necessary, and exactly the standard our captains hold for every guest who swims in the Blue Cave on a normal tour day.

A diver mid-jump from a Blue Cave ledge above two of our boats holding position in the water below, filmed during the exhibition at Plava Špilja, Kotor Bay.

Orlando Duque on our decks

The footage above is exactly what it looks like: a diver mid-jump from a Blue Cave ledge, with two of our boats holding position in the water directly below, ready for the landing and the pickup. It's a small, specific thing to be part of, and we'd rather describe it accurately than inflate it into something it wasn't. Kotor supported a cliff-diving exhibition inside the Blue Cave. Mostar is where the World Series actually competes. Both are true, and only one of them belongs on our boats' story.

Kotor's growing list of celebrity boat-tour moments

Duque's Blue Cave exhibition isn't the only well-known name Kotor's water has drawn onto our decks. Earlier the same season, our fleet also carried Olympic gold medalist and double UFC champion Henry Cejudo during a five-day MMA training seminar in Kotor — a separate event, same crew, same standard. If you're curious what other famous visitors Kotor has attracted recently, that's the other story worth reading.

The same crew, on your day

Whether it's positioning under a cliff dive at the Blue Cave or running a private Bay of Kotor tour, it's the same captains and the same boats. Book a private charter with us and you get the standard the exhibition work was held to — not a different, lesser version of it.

Read the full story of Henry Cejudo's Kotor MMA seminar week, the municipal reception, and the boat day that came with it.