Serbia’s railway modernisation plan has taken a major step forward. In October 2025, a key link was added to the main corridor connecting Serbia and Hungary — the Belgrade–Budapest line. The Novi Sad–Subotica section, located just ten kilometres from the Kelebija border crossing between the two countries, has been almost entirely reconstructed and is now operational.
Work on the 108-kilometre route began in 2022 and was awarded to a consortium of Chinese engineering and construction firms. Virtually nothing remains of the old railway between Novi Sad and Subotica. The track has been doubled and electrified, level crossings have been eliminated with bridges and overpasses, and European-standard signalling has been installed. Major engineering works include two viaducts totalling over two kilometres, five tunnels, and more than forty underpasses and flyovers.
Serbian Railways are highlighting the significant reduction in passenger travel times enabled by the new alignment, which allows speeds of up to 200 km/h, while freight operations will also benefit. The previous line had become completely obsolete, allowing average speeds of only 45 km/h — essentially those of a slow freight convoy. The new alignment meets the latest European Technical Specifications for Interoperability (TSI), although, as the contractors specify, it has been rebuilt using Chinese railway technology.
The southern section from Novi Sad to Belgrade, covering 75 kilometres, was already reconstructed and opened to traffic in 2022, again with financial and technical input from Chinese firms — a sign of growing interest in this geopolitical area. On 22 January 2022, during a trial run marking the end of the works, a train reached 200 km/h for the first time on the Serbian network. The line was only partially doubled and modernised in its existing alignment; in more challenging areas, new track variants were built. The main engineering feature on the 40-km stretch between Novi Sad and Stara Pazova is the Čortanovci variant, a high-capacity section built almost entirely on long viaducts and imposing twin-bore tunnels.
Once the entire corridor from Hungary to the Serbian capital is modernised, passenger trains between Budapest and Belgrade will see journey times cut by nearly two-thirds. Freight traffic will also gain from the upgraded routes, which will no longer face restrictions in capacity or loading gauge. This marks a major improvement over the old Belgrade–Novi Sad–Subotica line, where only 35 of its 183 kilometres had double track and where both route and speed limits were severely outdated.
The challenge for Serbia now is to complete the national network enhancement plan, which includes major routes such as the 200-kilometre central section between Belgrade and Niš towards Bulgaria and North Macedonia, and the transversal Valjevo–Vrbnica line, as well as the northern connection from Subotica to Sombor near the Croatian border. An alternative route is also being considered towards the north-east between Belgrade and Kikinda.
Piermario Curti Sacchi
