Premier Daniel Andrews said White Night Melbourne would not roll out to regional Victoria next year despite speculation to the contrary ahead of the festival’s launch Monday.

However, Mr Andrews said it was a likely prospect after 2016.  

"If you look at the great regional cities of Geelong, Ballarat, Bendigo you can see that it would potentially work," the premier said.  

But the man responsible for major events and tourism planning in Bendigo said the city had not explored the idea of hosting White Night due to the high cost of large, night-time projections.

City of Greater Bendigo Council City Futures director Stan Liacos said council was “up for” hosting the festival – if the state came up with the cash.  

“It’s an expensive proposition and it’s one that we would need the strong support of the Victorian government to make it work,” he said.  

Speaking at the Melbourne Museum on Monday, Premier Andrews said next year’s festival would be run by the government instead of being contracted out, but refused to detail the cost of staging the event. 

Instead, the premier said it contributed $16.8 million this year to Victoria's economy.

"It is not so much a cost as an investment," the premier said.

Mr Liacos said Bendigo’s arts culture, history and heritage buildings would make it a natural fit for “a White Night-type event”.

“It works in Melbourne but it does have a healthy budget and the regional cities would not have the financial capability of doing it themselves... they would need significant support from the Victorian government,” he said.

“But I suspect if the Victorian government did want to see the White Night model roll out across Victoria then it would make perfectly good sense to do it in Bendigo, which has a compact and beautiful looking city centre with the type of buildings that are well placed upon which to throw lighting projections.”

The former director of marketing and events at Melbourne's Federation Square cited the Pall Mall facades – the Beehive Building, RSL memorial, the TAFE and court buildings – as well as the Capital Theatre and Ulumbarra as structures which could be used for the festival.

He added, though, events such as the writers festival and major exhibitions at the Bendigo Art Gallery were examples of Bendigo doing things in “its own clever, creative way”.

“We’d welcome the opportunity to work with the state but, having said that, we're also in the business of developing our own unique suite of events and us merely replicating what Melbourne does is not in of itself something that we get obsessed about,” he said.

“We’re very proud of the suite of major events that Bendigo has... we're doing things that are making other regional cities look at and say, ‘wow’.”