Serbia will not introduce visas for Russian citizens before the end of 2026, officials in Belgrade have confirmed, after months of speculation that the country could follow Montenegro in tightening entry rules for Russians as it pushes toward European Union membership.
The debate resurfaced after Serbia's minister for European integration, Nemanja Starović, told Radio Television of Serbia in August that Belgrade had an action plan it wanted to fully carry out by the end of 2027 to be ready for accession to the Schengen zone. The plan includes ending visa-free travel for countries outside the European Union, including Russia.
Mixed signals from Belgrade
Serbia and Russia have had a mutual visa-free arrangement since July 2009, letting citizens of each country stay in the other for up to 30 days without a visa. Hours after his interview aired, Starović clarified that Serbia had no current plan to introduce visas for Russians. Serbia's ambassador to Russia, Momčilo Babić, said the move would not happen quickly and that there was no reason for concern before next year.
Montenegro has already acted: from November 1, 2026, Russians will need a visa to enter the country, along with citizens of Belarus, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and China. Yuri Pilipson, director of the Russian Foreign Ministry's second European department, said in August that Moscow did not yet know what entry conditions Russians would face in Podgorica after October 31, 2026.
Vucic denies plans
The visa question first surfaced in Serbian media in June, when Dragan Stanojević, head of the Serbian parliament's diaspora committee, said it was being discussed as part of Belgrade's compliance with Brussels' membership requirements. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned at the time that Moscow would respond with symmetrical measures if Belgrade went ahead.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić rejected the reports, insisting Serbia had no plans to restrict Russian citizens and that even if visas were introduced, they would be scrapped immediately. Serbian government minister Nenad Popović went further, calling Russians "the kindest guests" of the republic and promising the visa-free regime would stay. Citing direct flights between the two countries, he invited Russian tourists to visit, pointing to Belgrade, Novi Sad, Niš and Serbia's Orthodox monasteries alongside its lakes, rivers and mountains.
Tourism at stake
The stakes are real: 170,000 Russians visited Serbia in the first half of 2026, more than any other foreign nationality, out of roughly two million total foreign visitors last year. Industrial expert Leonid Khazanov told Lenta.ru that visa procedures are costly and complex, and estimated the number of Russian visitors could halve if a visa regime were imposed. Serbia's total annual tourism revenue exceeds 2 billion euros, he noted, meaning tighter entry rules would hit the tourism sector and related industries hard, while also denting investment as Russians have been active buyers of Serbian property.
Deepening ties with Moscow
Even as the visa debate simmered, Russia and Serbia moved to deepen cooperation. In the spring, the two countries signed a broad economic cooperation program running through 2031, covering IT, energy, transport, agriculture, space and low-carbon development. Russian Economic Development Minister Maxim Reshetnikov called the agreement a "powerful step" for Serbia, saying cooperation across a wide range of areas was more intensive than ever, helped by regular contact between the two countries' leaders.
Vučić has repeatedly said his policy is to avoid sanctions and maintain friendly relations with Russia, while acknowledging the cost. Speaking to Serbian broadcaster TV Informer, quoted by RTV, he said that if Serbia had joined sanctions against Russia he would have been hailed as the world's greatest democratic leader, but that doing so would betray the soul of the Serbian people. He said he was not sure Russians understood the pressure Serbia was under.
Alexander Pivovarenko, a researcher at Moscow's Higher School of Economics' Center for Mediterranean Studies, said the contradictory statements from Serbian officials reflect internal disagreement among the country's leadership between preserving ties with Russia and staying on course for EU membership.
Visa runs crackdown
Russian relocators have also become a significant economic presence, founding more than 11,000 businesses in Serbia, including cafes, shops, kindergartens, sports schools and hotels, and helping spawn 7,000 new IT companies, prompting talk of Serbia as a potential fintech hub for southeastern Europe.
Serbia's appeal to Russians rested largely on easy visa-free entry and simpler residence permits than neighboring Croatia or Montenegro. Many without formal residency relied on "visa running," crossing the border briefly once a month to reset the 30-day limit. But Belgrade has begun aligning its practice with EU rules limiting visa-free stays to 90 days within any 180-day period, and since March has issued court orders requiring Russians without residence permits to leave.
Mikhail Abbasov of the Russian Union of the Tourism Industry said this summer that a quiet tightening was underway, with border guards and police increasingly treating repeated visa runs as violations. According to the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy and Serbian border police, between 80,000 and 110,000 Russians were living in Serbia as of February 2025, but only 67,000 held official residence permits. Pivovarenko suggested Serbia could instead introduce national visas, which would not open other European borders but would allow Russians to legally live, work and study in Serbia while applying for residence.
Risks to gas and trade
Pivovarenko said Belgrade is more tied to Moscow than it may appear, given its reliance on Russian energy, skilled Russian workers and tourism revenue that would fall under a visa regime.
Economist Ahmed Yusupov, a partner at the communications agency Goldman & Po, said tourism would likely take the brunt of any change, with travelers rerouting elsewhere and Belgrade risking its position as a convenient transit hub, affecting hotels, transport and catering. He said a light-touch visa process could still protect the industry from a sharp decline, but warned Russia would likely respond with mirror measures affecting business and professional exchanges, forcing Russian companies to seek new routes and partners.
Political scientist Ilya Grashchenkov said that if Serbia does end visa-free travel in 2027, the immediate effect would not be a major economic crisis but a decline in the country's appeal specifically to Russians, given its unique combination of visa-free entry, direct flights and location in Europe. He said a visa regime could also push part of the Russian diaspora to formalize residency through work, business or property, while others leave, denting demand for rentals, restaurants and services, and part of the IT sector, mainly in Belgrade and Novi Sad, though the overall economic effect would be limited rather than systemic.
What could follow
Grashchenkov said ending the visa-free regime would not by itself cancel the 2026-2031 cooperation program, but warned that if it became part of a broader alignment with EU policy, questions over sanctions, energy and the position of Russian business could follow, which he called far more serious for bilateral relations than a passport stamp.
Khazanov said Moscow could respond by banning imports of Serbian agricultural goods such as fruit and frozen vegetables, hurting Serbian farmers given the EU already has ample supply, and could impose trade barriers on Serbian non-ferrous metals and electrical goods, while also revising the price of natural gas toward market levels. Serbia consumes 2.6 billion cubic meters of gas a year, almost entirely supplied by Russian imports, and Khazanov said no other supplier could match that price if relations soured.
Most analysts nonetheless lean toward a moderate outcome. Yusupov said Serbia is likely to keep pursuing compromise, balancing its EU obligations with bilateral cooperation, though this would require careful diplomacy. Grashchenkov agreed that Moscow and Belgrade will look for a transitional arrangement letting Serbia formally meet Brussels' demands while legally protecting the human and economic ties built up over years. He said Serbia has long maneuvered successfully between economic integration with Europe and its special relationship with Russia, but that balance grows harder to sustain the closer the country moves to the institutional border of the EU and Schengen, making the visa question one of the clearest signs yet that Serbia's room for a multi-directional foreign policy is narrowing.
