293 Water Complaints From 162 Towns in Serbia
Three summer months, 87 municipalities, one complaint: the tap runs dry. Here's what the fresh count from the Right to Water initiative shows, and where things are worst.
Have you spent this summer timing the gaps between kettle refills? If so, you’re not the exception, you’re the statistic. The Right to Water initiative released its tally for June, July, and August 2026 today: 293 complaints from 87 municipalities, spanning 162 different towns and villages across Serbia.
Until now, coverage focused on individual villages left without water and on rivers that dropped below navigable levels. This is the first time anyone has added up the whole problem into a single number, and that number is bigger than you’d expect after a summer in which official data from utility companies looked reassuring.
Why the water is running out
This is the third year running that the initiative has tracked water supply through the summer, when pressure on resources peaks. Residents named the cause themselves in their complaints, and the breakdown is clear:
- drought and dried-up water sources, 77.8 percent of complaints
- works and breakdowns on the water network, 15.4 percent of complaints
- completely unknown cause, 6.8 percent, water simply stops flowing with no warning at all
Behind the numbers sits the same problem wearing different faces: an aging distribution network, missing primary water mains, and falling groundwater levels in private wells. The initiative warns that Serbia sits in a region warming faster than the global average, so occasional heavy rainfall can no longer offset longer dry spells.
Where it’s worst, town by town
The shutoff schedule isn’t the same everywhere, and that difference alone shows how uneven the problem is:
- Barajevo, water is cut every night, from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.
- Gornji Milanovac, shutoffs run by zone, in shifts from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. and 6 p.m. to 6 a.m.
- Begec, near Novi Sad, homes with an upper floor go without water from 6 a.m. until 11 p.m.
- Mladenovac and Sopot, restrictions that have dragged on for months
- Vrnjacka Banja, water allocation geared toward tourism, while surrounding villages go dry for days
- Prolom Banja, not a single household currently has access to running water
- Kuklje, near Valjevo, restrictions reported on the village water system
In Gornji Milanovac, residents say even that split schedule doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to in practice:
“The water comes late and cuts off early, while the upper zones of town go without it for a lot longer. In the villages, the shutoff schedule isn’t followed at all, sometimes there’s no water for more than 24 hours. The drought is part of the problem, but so are losses in the water network, which run 50 to 70 percent. If the municipality invested in the network, we probably wouldn’t have reached restrictions at all. Instead, burst pipes have become routine this time of year.”
The same complaint, network losses rather than the drought itself, comes up again in Begec:
“Houses with an upper floor have no water from 6 a.m. until 11 p.m. Ground-floor houses get terrible pressure during that time, you can’t even run a washing machine or a boiler. I know people who go to friends in nearby towns just to take a shower. It isn’t humane that someone who wakes up at 5 a.m. for work has to wait until 11 p.m. to wash.”
When the water is there, but it isn’t yours
In villages around Jagodina, the problem isn’t only the shortage, it’s also a question of who paid for the infrastructure and who profits from it now:
“The first residents of the settlement dug the pipe trenches themselves and paid for everything out of their own pocket, and now they and their descendants have no water, while the company that delivers it just collects money for new connections.”
And a resident near Belgrade described in their own complaint what that daily reality actually means:
“In 2026, water restrictions shouldn’t be normal. It’s a life unworthy of a human being…”
What you can do today
If you live in one of the affected towns, it’s worth knowing that the initiative keeps a map of reported restrictions through the Polekol platform, where you can check whether your settlement has already been reported and add your own case. That’s a concrete first step, simpler than it sounds, and it costs nothing but a few minutes.
For a long-term fix, the initiative says the responsibility doesn’t fall on individual households:
“Unless a clear policy on water-use priorities, source protection, and the distribution of available water resources is put in place, the heaviest burden of shortages will once again fall on residents and local communities.”
Until that policy exists, the practical advice stays the same as in past summers: check your town’s shutoff schedule in advance, and if your settlement is among the 162 affected, report it, because that’s exactly how this tally of 293 cases came together in the first place.
