This paper asks to what extent the performances in carnival festivities can demonstrate identity formation process in Ottoman Macedonia in the first decade of 20th century? The revisionist historiography on nation-state and identity formation challenges essentialist and nationalistic perspective and illustrates shifting and multi-layered processes of identity formation. Building up on this approach, this paper takes carnival festivities as a new lens through which ordinary people’s transgressive but playful experimentation on identities can be understood for its ambiguous and complex nature. Carnival festivities at the turn of the 20th century were annual urban and/or rural occasions of public revelry and subversion in Ottoman Empire. These were mostly mobilized and organized by the people, for the people and was associated with the Christian communities of the Ottoman Empire. Outside the hegemonic tools of identity construction, carnival can be considered subaltern, disorganized and ambiguous form of expression in which masquerades utilized play, mockery and disguise as their main tool. To demonstrate, this paper focuses on cases which came to the attention of Ottoman authorities due to the involvement mockery of imperial and Islamic values, protests targeting other independent states, churches and communities, as well as celebration of identities and national affiliations that were considered “harmful”. As part of this task, the performances in these cases are contextualized against the background of the early 20th century Balkans together with taking into consideration the particular cosmology that carnivalesque environment creates. As a result, the cases from carnivals in different cities show that identity formation did not replace old forms and affiliations with a new and monolithic one, but instead occurred in a creative co-existence of multi-layered meanings and symbols. Use of various disguises, ethnic and political symbols reveal that people were experimenting with identities that were cut across various lines. Religion and ethnic categories of the pre-nation-state period, were becoming more intertwined with affiliations to independent churches and states in the imperial context in the insurgent and violent context of the early 20th century. By doing that, this paper aims to incorporate ordinary voices and performances into the discussion of nationalism and identity formation as well as consider Ottoman carnivals as a social phenomenon that contributes to the discussion of transgressive identity formation, subaltern cultures and state-society relations.