Belgrade Is Serbia's Only Region With Construction Growth
Construction work in Serbia rose 9 percent in real terms in the second quarter of 2026, but only the Belgrade region is behind that growth: the other three regions posted declines.
The value of construction work carried out in Serbia in the second quarter of 2026 was 20.6 percent higher in current prices than in the same quarter of 2025, the Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia (RZS) reported on August 10. In real terms, once the rising cost of materials and services is stripped out, the increase comes to 9 percent. The gap between those two figures is price, not the amount of work actually done.
Behind that average, a single headline number hides a split. Buildings are growing while everything else is shrinking, and one region is growing while the other three are not.
Buildings carry the entire increase
Broken down by type of structure, the real-terms value of work on buildings rose 32.4 percent, while work on other structures, a category that covers roads, bridges, pipelines and energy facilities, fell 7.1 percent.
The split is not new. Building work has now grown for eight quarters in a row, and April through June 2026 was the strongest quarter in that run. The first quarter of this year brought 13.2 percent growth, and 2025 saw quarterly growth ranging between 2.4 and 13.3 percent. For other structures, the picture is reversed: of the eight quarters since mid-2024, only one came in positive, the last quarter of 2025, with 8.8 percent growth. In the first quarter of 2026, the category fell 21.4 percent.
Why is Belgrade the only region growing?
The statistics office measures the trend rather than explaining it, and the regional breakdown for the second quarter looks like this:
- Belgrade region, growth of 51 percent
- Vojvodina region, decline of 2 percent
- Sumadija and Western Serbia region, decline of 27.5 percent
- Southern and Eastern Serbia region, decline of 32.3 percent
Belgrade is the only region where the real-terms value of construction work grew at all. The three regions posting declines together cover most of Serbia’s territory and most of its population.
The six-month total is nearly flat
For the first six months of 2026 combined, the value of construction work carried out was up 1.3 percent in real terms compared to the same period last year. Building growth of 25 percent over the half year was almost entirely canceled out by a 13.7 percent drop in other structures.
The comparison with the previous year explains why this reads as a leveling off rather than an expansion. Serbia’s total construction work in 2025 came to 785 billion dinars (about 6.7 billion euros at an exchange rate of roughly 117 dinars to the euro), itself 5.4 percent lower than the year before.
Housing supply holds up, but apartments are getting smaller
Housing construction survived this down year too. Serbia has built more than 35,000 apartments a year for the past three years, and in 2025 the figure passed 36,000, or 5.6 units per 1,000 residents.
The average completed apartment measured 72.7 square meters. Combined with the fact that building work has grown for eight straight quarters concentrated in the Belgrade region, that points to most of the country’s new housing stock being built in the one market where a square meter costs the most.
The next snapshot arrives with third-quarter data, which will show whether the eight-quarter streak of building growth continues, and whether other structures finally climb out of the slump they have been stuck in almost without a break since mid-2024.
