Vucic and Dana White Trade Gifts Before UFC Belgrade
The UFC president was received by Serbia's head of state for the first time, three days before the promotion's Belgrade debut. Vucic got a title belt, White a gusle and a framed flag.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic received a UFC delegation on Wednesday, July 29, at the General Secretariat of the President of the Republic on Andricev Venac 1 in Belgrade. The delegation was led by Dana White, president of the promotion, and the reception was set for noon, three days before the first UFC event ever held in Serbia.
Sports Minister Zoran Gajic, Minister Darko Glisic and Luka Nikolic, president of the Serbian MMA Federation, sat in on the meeting. The president’s office announced it a day earlier, on July 28, under the heading “Meeting with the UFC delegation”, with an accreditation deadline of 8 p.m. that same day. Camera crews and photographers were allowed to record only the opening of the talks, after which reporters were told a written statement would follow.
A belt for the president, a gusle for the UFC boss
The gift exchange fell inside the window the cameras were given. White handed Vucic a UFC championship belt. Vucic gave his guest a gusle, the single-string Serbian folk instrument, carved from quality wood, and a framed Serbian flag, explaining that this was the flag he had with him at the United Nations and that it was framed as a symbol of what Serbia stands for.
“You have to be a real poet and a real artist to play this,” Vucic said as he passed over the instrument. White kept his reply short: “Thank you for your kindness and for your time, Mr. President.”
The host then turned to the logistics of the weekend:
We will do everything we can to host you as best as possible. And you have to accept all our offers, so that we can look after you in the days ahead
Vucic said the level of interest caught him off guard. “I did not know UFC had become so popular in our country, I was truly thrilled,” he said, noting that every ticket sold out in 22 minutes despite steep prices. “People literally snapped up the tickets,” he added.
And a lot of my friends asked for tickets and tried to get them. And we received thousands of ticket requests
He also said Belgrade hotels are full and that fans are travelling in from North Macedonia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Hungary. White answered that this “is good for tourism, for shopping, for the whole city”.
What is the state paying for one night in the Arena?
The figure nobody mentioned in front of the cameras sits in a Ministry of Sports document dated June 5, 2026. For that single-day event the ministry approved 260,000,000 dinars, roughly 2,215,000 euros. The annual budget for all of Serbian sport is 2,368,027,200 dinars, a little over 20 million euros, which means one night in the Arena takes more than a tenth of the yearly pot.
For comparison, the 2026 annual allocations look like this:
- Olympic Committee of Serbia, 280,000,000 dinars
- Basketball Federation, 180,000,000 dinars
- Volleyball Federation, 170,000,000 dinars
- athletics, 76,000,000 dinars
- swimming, 37,500,000 dinars
- gymnastics, 17,000,000 dinars
Only the Olympic Committee of Serbia gets more for a full year than the UFC got for one fight night. Neither the reports from the reception nor the office’s advisory mentioned any contract or memorandum being signed, so nothing in the public record shows whether further Belgrade events were discussed.
What comes before Saturday
The Arena’s fight week starts earlier than most assume. Two days before the UFC, on July 30, the same hall hosts Power Slap 22, the franchise’s first slap-fighting card staged in Europe. UFC Fight Night follows on Saturday, August 1, the promotion’s Serbian debut.
Nine Serbian fighters are on the card, among them Uros Medic, Aleksandar Rakic, Dusko Todorovic, Marina Spasic, Jovan Leka, Nina Milosevic, Milos Janicic and debutant Borislav Nikolic. The UFC lists the show as UFC Fight Night: Medic vs Rodriguez, with prelims at 4 p.m. and the main card at 7 p.m. Belgrade time, while Serbian outlets say the programme in the Arena opens at 3 p.m.
By the afternoon of July 29, the news section of predsednik.rs carried no statement from the meeting. The most recent item there was dated July 25.
