According to Serbian Economist, the French company Alstom has been awarded a €915 million contract to supply a comprehensive turnkey solution for Belgrade’s first metro line—Serbia’s first fully automated metro system. The company announced this on March 27, and the news portal Parametar (https://www.parametar.rs/) described the deal as one of the largest infrastructure projects in the region in recent years.
The first phase of Line 1 will connect Makishko Pole and Karaburma. The 15-kilometer section will include 15 stations, with approximately 11 kilometers running through tunnels in the city center.
The contract calls for the delivery of 32 driverless three-car Metropolis trains, as well as signaling and telecommunications systems, power supply, track infrastructure, platform doors, depot equipment, a centralized control center, and cybersecurity systems. The trains will operate using Urbalis CBTC technology, which will enable fully automated service with intervals of up to 90 seconds.
Alstom has already entered the design phase for Line 1. The company emphasizes that the project is being implemented with the support of French government funding, and the agreement itself will be reflected in the financial statements after the finalization of the financial agreement.
The Belgrade metro project is estimated at €4–7 billion in total, and the financing needs for the first line alone could reach €2.5 billion. Construction work on the project is being carried out separately, notably with the participation of Chinese contractors, making the construction model Franco-Chinese in terms of supply and execution.
According to Serbian Economist, Serbia’s real estate market continued to grow through the end of 2025: in the fourth quarter, the total volume of transactions reached €2.4 billion, marking the highest quarterly level since the Real Estate Price Register was established. This was reported by the Republic Geodetic Institute of Serbia (RGZ).
According to RGZ, in October–December 2025, the market value rose by 9% year-over-year, and the number of purchase and sale agreements increased by 6.9%, to 37,386. Apartments accounted for €1.4 billion, or 61% of the total value of all transactions.
Regionally, the number of transactions in the fourth quarter rose by 10.9% in Belgrade and by 5.8% in Kragujevac, while a decline of 6.5% was recorded in Niš and 8.7% in Novi Sad. A total of €768.5 million was spent on apartment purchases in Belgrade alone during this period.
The most expensive apartment of the quarter was sold in the municipality of Savski Venac for €1.4 million, with an area of 90 square meters, while the maximum price per square meter in the same municipality reached €15,298. The most expensive house was also sold in Savski Venac for €1 million, and a parking space for €60,000.
Earlier, RGZ reported that as early as the first quarter of 2025, the market showed a 9.3% increase in value alongside a 2.4% decline in the number of transactions, indicating further appreciation of assets. By the end of the year, this trend persisted, but the market simultaneously returned to growth in the number of transactions.
Vera Yegorova-Tolsta, owner of the real estate agency VIDOVSTAN, also noted the market’s growth in her review. Overall, RGZ data show that even with local fluctuations in individual cities, Serbia’s real estate market remained one of the most stable segments of the country’s economy through the end of 2025.
https://t.me/relocationrs/2490
According to the Serbian Economist, Serbia’s preparations for the international specialized exhibition EXPO 2027 in Belgrade are accompanied by discussions about the scale of investments and their comparability with the effect of similar events in the world. The exhibition is scheduled to open on May 15, 2027 and close on August 15, 2027.
Serbian authorities earlier presented the “Leap into the Future – Serbia 2027” program, including 323 projects across the country, the total amount of which was estimated at €17.8 billion, with Finance Minister Sinisa Mali emphasizing that the direct costs of the exhibition itself will amount to about €1.2 billion, while the remaining amounts relate to broader infrastructure and development initiatives.
Separately, the EXPO 2027 orgs point out that the “EXPO project cost” in their interpretation is estimated at around €1.29 billion and includes the exhibition site and a number of related facilities and communications (including transport and engineering components), rather than the national investment program as a whole.
In parallel, the project is already reflected in the budget architecture. In the budget for 2026 adopted by Serbia, the Serbian Economist allocates the largest single item of capex for EXPO 2027 – 47.5 billion dinars.
Comparison with the experience of other exhibitions usually shows that direct revenues rarely offset the total bill, and the key is the “legacy” – infrastructure, tourist flows, business connections and reuse of facilities. For example, World Expo 2010 in Shanghai attracted about 73 million visitors and Expo 2015 in Milan about 21.5 million, while Expo 2020 Dubai reported 24.1 million visits. For Belgrade, as a specialized exhibition, the expected scale is lower: the official resource of EXPO 2027 states expectations of “more than 4 million” visitors.
In the Serbian case, the key question is how effectively the costs will be “landed” in the long-term economy: the utilization of the new exhibition infrastructure after August 2027, the impact on tourism and urban development, as well as the ability to contain budget risks and avoid underutilization of facilities.
https://t.me/relocationrs/2142
According to Serbian Economist, the first Belgrade Film Festival (Beograd Film Festival, BFF) will be held in the Serbian capital from January 30 to February 6, 2026, which the organizers are positioning as a new platform for screening notable world premieres and festival films. The main venue will be the mts Dvorana cinema in the center of Belgrade.
The festival will open with a special screening of Jim Jarmusch’s new film Father Mother Sister Brother, and the program also includes other high-profile works, such as Fatih Akin’s Amrum and François Ozon’s Stranac (The Stranger) by François Ozon, which will be presented to the Belgrade audience as part of the BFF.
The concept of the festival is to combine auteur cinema, festival hits, and new works by masters in one program, making Belgrade one of the stops on the European festival calendar.
According to published information, festival films are being screened at mts Dvorana in the usual cinema format, with tickets sold at the cinema box office and online (including eFinity).
https://t.me/relocationrs/2010
The Serbian Economist reports that Prindon Sadrija, the husband of Kosovo President Vjosa Osmani, called on Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner to move the Trump Hotel project to Pristina, which his organization had previously rejected in Belgrade.
Sadrija wrote on social network X that the withdrawal from the Belgrade project confirms the thesis that “significant projects should unite, not divide,” and suggested “moving this idea to Pristina” with the transformation of the capital’s Grand Hotel into Trump Hotel.
The statement came amid reports that Affinity Global Development, linked to Kushner, has withdrawn from plans to build a hotel and residential complex on the site of the former General Staff building in downtown Belgrade, which was damaged during the 1999 NATO bombing and has been the subject of public controversy over memory preservation and cultural heritage status.
The company notified the decision to withdraw from the project after months of protests and amid a legal scandal surrounding the removal of the site’s protected status, for which the Serbian prosecutor’s office sought to prosecute a number of officials.
In Serbian statements, the losses are estimated at “at least 750 million euros” – a figure that Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and representatives of the ruling party have voiced, linking the investor’s withdrawal to the pressure of protesters.
At the same time, earlier publications on the parameters of the project estimated the investment at about $500 million.
https://t.me/relocationrs/1999
As Serbian Economist reports, the first Ukrainian Literature Festival organized by the Ukrainian Center “Triglav” in cooperation with the Embassy of Ukraine in Serbia took place in the Serbian capital.
The event united Ukrainian writers, translators, literary critics and Serbian fans of Ukrainian culture.
According to the organizers, the goal of the festival is to popularize modern Ukrainian literature abroad and develop cultural dialogue between Ukraine and Serbia.
The festival included readings by Ukrainian authors, presentations of translations into Serbian, panel discussions and meetings with translators working on adapting works by Ukrainian writers for local audiences.
New translations of Ukrainian works into Serbian were presented during the festival. Serbian publishers emphasized that interest in Ukrainian culture has grown significantly after 2022.
https://t.me/relocationrs/1569
