Serbia's Chinese-built high-speed railway has carried 12.5 million passengers to Novi Sad in 36 minutes, the Budapest link opens imminently — and Alstom just signed €915 million for the Balkans' first driverless metro.
The Belgrade–Novi Sad high-speed line — Serbia's first, built with Chinese partners at 200 km/h design speed — opened in March 2022 and has carried 12.5 million passengers; the extension to Subotica and the Hungarian border followed, completing the Serbian side of the Belgrade–Budapest corridor. Hungarian passenger services are expected to launch within months, after repeated 2026 postponements — the last hold-up being signalling harmonisation.
The city's rail map is mid-migration: long-distance trains now use Belgrade Centre (Prokop), the old riverside terminus closed for the Waterfront development; BG Voz suburban EMUs run the cross-city tunnel via Vukov Spomenik; and the future metro's Makiš depot ties into the national network. Novi Sad — the Petrovaradin fortress city — is the flagship day trip at 36 minutes.
The metro is the generation project: Alstom's €915-million turnkey contract (March 2026) covers the fully automated Line 1 phase one — 15 km, 15 stations, 11 km of tunnels from Makiško Polje to Karaburma — with 32 driverless Metropolis trains built in Valenciennes, Urbalis CBTC signalling, platform screen doors and the Makiš depot. Commissioning is targeted around 2030; SYSTRA supervises as PMC.
Belgrade is the rare capital getting its entire rail century at once: a high-speed line north (Novi Sad 36 minutes, Subotica 1h10), the Budapest link about to open the corridor to Central Europe, and a first metro under contract — all arriving inside one decade. Practically: the Soko trains from the new Belgrade Centre station (Prokop) are the way to Novi Sad — book the Srbija Voz app, fares under €10; BG Voz suburban trains cross the city underground at Vukov Spomenik; the old terminus by the river is now the Waterfront's front garden, so don't go there for trains. The Budapest service — the line is built, trains certified, politics aligning — will put Hungary ~3h30 away and make Belgrade a rail gateway to the EU for the first time since Yugoslavia. Watch item: the metro's real opening date — the contract is signed (March 2026), the target ~2030, and Belgrade's track record on metros is fifty years of announcements. This time there are trains on order.
Subscribe to the digest and receive key market signals every two weeks.