Serbia: visa and entry rules

Serbia's borders: every crossing point

Serbia's land border crossings, listed by the neighbour they lead to:

With Hungary: Horgos and Kelebija - the main gateway into the Schengen area, and the place with the longest queues.
With Croatia: Batrovci - Bajakovo on the Belgrade - Zagreb motorway, and Sid.
With Bosnia and Herzegovina: Sremska Raca, Mali Zvornik, Bajina Basta.
With Montenegro: Gostun, Jablanica.
With Bulgaria: Gradina - Kalotina, Vrska Cuka.
With North Macedonia: Presevo - Tabanovce.
With Romania: Vatin, Kalafat - Djerdap.
With Kosovo: Jarinje, Merdare, Koncul.

The crossings towards Hungary are the bottleneck. All the traffic heading into the Schengen area passes through them, and in high season the wait is measured in hours.

The Kosovo direction is arranged differently. Serbia treats these points as administrative crossings rather than a state border. The practical consequence: entering Kosovo through them causes no problems, but entering Kosovo from Albania or North Macedonia and then leaving into Serbia does, because the Serbian side has no record of your entry into the country.

The Bosnian direction is the one people use to reset their permitted stay, and there are many crossings there, including small local ones.

Driving to Serbia

A Green Card is compulsory. The insurance is bought in advance or at the border.

Tolls are paid at the barriers; the motorway from Belgrade to Nis and on towards the borders is tolled for almost its entire length.

Temporary import is registered automatically by a stamp on entry, and its validity matches your permitted length of stay.

Travelling to Serbia with a pet

A microchip is compulsory, to the ISO standard, and it must be implanted before the rabies vaccination.

The rabies vaccination must be given no later than 21 days before entry.

A rabies antibody titre test is required only for pets from a country not on the EU's approved list. The US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK are on the list, so this does not apply to pets travelling from those countries; Russia is one of the countries it does apply to. The sample is taken no earlier than 30 days after the vaccination and no later than three months before the trip.

A veterinary certificate is drawn up before the trip and endorsed by the state veterinary service.

More than two animals per person counts as commercial import and is handled under different rules.

Overstaying your visa in Serbia

The fine is issued when you leave. The thirty-day limit is short, and overstaying by a couple of days happens here more often than in countries with a three-month allowance.

Not having the white registration slip is a separate offence, unrelated to the length of your stay: you can be fined even if you kept within the thirty days.

An entry ban is imposed for a substantial overstay or for repeated violations.

Frequent visa runs are not in themselves a violation, but if you keep coming back time after time the border officer may refuse you entry - formally that is within their rights.