Current Time in Belgrade

💡 How Serbia changes its clocks: Clocks spring forward on the last Sunday in March at 02:00 local CET (becoming 03:00 CEST), and fall back on the last Sunday in October at 03:00 local CEST (becoming 02:00 CET). Serbia is not an EU member but follows the same DST schedule as EU countries, staying fully synchronised with Zagreb, Vienna, Budapest, Berlin, Warsaw, Amsterdam and Paris. Belgrade is always exactly 1 hour ahead of London, always 1 hour behind Bucharest, and for most of the year … ahead of New York — with brief 5-hour windows during spring and autumn transitions.

• ~5000 BC – 75 BC The site of Belgrade has been continuously settled since the Vinča culture (~5700–4500 BC), one of the most advanced Neolithic civilisations in Europe; the eponymous Vinča archaeological site lies only 14 km southeast of the city centre. Around the 3rd century BC, the Celtic tribe of the Scordisci founded a settlement at the river confluence. The Romans conquered the region around 75 BC and established a legionary fortress called Singidunum, an important outpost on the Danubian frontier (limes). The fortress guarded the crossing point for centuries; Emperor Constantine the Great was born at nearby Naissus (modern Niš) in 272 AD. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Singidunum was sacked by the Huns in 441 AD, beginning centuries of contested possession.
• 441 – 1404 After the Roman period, Belgrade was contested by Byzantines, Ostrogoths, Gepids, Avars, Franks and Bulgars. Slavic peoples settled the region from the 6th century. The name Beograd (“White City” — from beo white + grad city/fortress) appears in written sources for the first time in 878 AD in a letter from Pope John VIII to Bulgarian Prince Boris I. Byzantine, Bulgarian and Hungarian rulers each controlled the fortress in succession. The fortress on the hill above the confluence was steadily reinforced; by the 13th century it had become one of the most formidable in the region. After the Battle of Kosovo (1389) weakened the Serbian state, the city’s importance as a frontier fortress grew even greater.
• 1404 – 1521 Belgrade became capital of the Serbian Despotate in 1404 under Despot Stefan Lazarević, who rebuilt the upper town, lower town and fortress into a major fortified city. Stefan’s court made Belgrade a centre of late medieval Serbian culture. After Stefan’s death, the city passed to Hungary; under Hungarian rule, the legendary general John Hunyadi (Janos Hunyadi) organised the famous Siege of Belgrade of 1456, defeating the Ottoman army of Sultan Mehmed II — the conqueror of Constantinople — in one of the most celebrated Christian victories of the 15th century, celebrated across Western Europe with church bells. The city held out against Ottoman pressure for another 65 years before Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent finally captured it on 28 August 1521.
• 1521 – 1830 Under Ottoman rule Belgrade became Dârül-cihad (“House of Holy War”), a major administrative and commercial city of the empire, with mosques, bazaars, hammams and a cosmopolitan population. The city changed hands dramatically between Ottomans and Habsburgs: captured by Habsburgs in 1688, 1717 (Treaty of Passarowitz, under which Austria held Belgrade for 22 years) and briefly in 1789. Each occupation brought massive destruction and population displacement. The First Serbian Uprising (1804–1813) under Karađorđe and the Second Serbian Uprising (1815) under Miloš Obrenović progressively won Serbian autonomy. Belgrade became capital of the autonomous Principality of Serbia in 1830, with the last Ottoman garrison finally withdrawing from the fortress only in 1867.
• 1830 – 1944 As Serbia gained full independence (recognised at the Congress of Berlin, 1878), Belgrade rapidly transformed from a small Oriental town into a European capital with Grand boulevards, theatres, universities and public buildings. Serbia became a Kingdom in 1882; after the Balkan Wars (1912–13), Serbian territory doubled. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914 — a conspiracy organised partly from Belgrade — triggered World War I; Austria-Hungary bombarded Belgrade the very next day. After WWI, Belgrade became capital of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (Yugoslavia from 1929). Nazi Germany launched Operation Punishment on 6–7 April 1941, bombing Belgrade for two days without warning, killing thousands; the city was occupied until liberation by Soviet and Yugoslav Partisan forces on 20 October 1944.
• 1945 – Today Under Marshal Tito, Belgrade became the capital of socialist Yugoslavia and was transformed with vast New Belgrade housing projects and modernist public buildings. Yugoslavia’s independent “third way” between East and West made Belgrade host to the 1961 Non-Aligned Movement Summit. After Tito’s death (1980), growing tensions between republics culminated in the dissolution of Yugoslavia; the wars of the 1990s and international sanctions devastated the economy. The NATO bombing of 1999 (Operation Allied Force) destroyed bridges, the RTS television headquarters and other landmarks. The assassination of reformist PM Zoran Đinđić (2003) was a blow to democratic transition. Serbia declared independence from the state union with Montenegro in 2006; received EU candidate status in 2012. Today Belgrade is reinvented as one of Europe’s most dynamic and affordable cities, famous for its extraordinary nightlife (splavovi), warm hospitality, vibrant arts scene and the legendary EXIT Festival.

✈️ Belgrade Airport