Konavle Paralyzed: Ten-Hour Wait at Montenegro Border

Queues at the border with Montenegro brought almost the entire municipality of Konavle, in the far south of Croatia, to a standstill on Sunday, August 2, 2026, prompting municipal head Bozo Lasic to activate the Civil Protection Staff. The story is closer to home than it first appears: the Adriatic route to the Montenegrin coast runs straight through this bottleneck, and most of the drivers stuck in the line are not tourists headed to Montenegro at all, but transit travelers making their way to Albania and Kosovo.

The line toward the Karasovici crossing, the exit point from Croatia, stretched in the morning from Cilipi near Dubrovnik airport all the way to the barrier itself, more than twenty kilometers. Locals said the highway was jammed for 25 kilometers, from Grude to Molunat. By afternoon the queue had shrunk to around ten kilometers and began moving intermittently. Police in Zvekovica diverted part of the traffic onto alternative routes to keep the road to the airport passable.

What is causing the backup at Karasovici?

According to unofficial information, the bottleneck is not on the Croatian side. Entry checks at Montenegro’s Debeli Brijeg crossing were running considerably slower, which caused the queues to merge with the Croatian crossing and then spill onto local roads across Konavle. Croatian police, by the same accounts, were working with their Montenegrin counterparts to find a way to speed up the flow of vehicles.

Border police say this is the busiest weekend of the year, with more than 40,000 vehicles passing through.

“It comes down mainly to road infrastructure. Huge queues are already forming at the highway exit at Karamatici. They arrive at the border crossing in one long line, and the infrastructure we have leading up to the crossing is simply what it is.”

That is how Antun Ljubic, of the Border Service at the Dubrovnik-Neretva Police Administration, described the situation. His account shifts the blame away from the barrier itself and onto the road leading to it, a single lane highway with no bypass.

What the automobile club officially reported

The Croatian Automobile Club (HAK) released three figures on Sunday:

• multi hour waits at the exit from Croatia at Karasovici, with no specific number of hours given
• four hours at the entry into Croatia on the same crossing
• four hours at the Vitaljina crossing toward Montenegro

The claim that the wait at the exit runs as long as ten hours does not come from the automobile club. It comes from the municipal head’s own post and from accounts given by locals and travelers.

Locals hand out water, travelers wait it out in their cars

Firefighters from Konavle stepped up their shifts and handed out water, while residents let travelers from the queue into their homes to use the toilet.

“I got up this morning at 5:00 to bring people water, people who have been waiting 30 hours, and to let them use the toilet. They cry and they thank me.”

said Miho Prlenda, a resident of Grude, who also described what made up the line:

“It’s a very chaotic situation, the queue runs 25 kilometers along the highway toward Montenegro. The right lane is completely blocked by cars with Swiss, Italian and German plates. Those are guest workers from Kosovo, and this has already been going on for two days. The people of Konavle can’t breathe.”

Prlenda links the crush to the start of the Italian ferragosto, the period when most of Italy goes on holiday, combined with the fact that August 1 fell on a Saturday this year, which concentrated departures into two days instead of spreading them across a full work week.

Lasic: institutions notified, travel should be postponed

The head of the Konavle municipality called for an urgent response from the relevant authorities in his post.

“The wait to cross the state border at the Karasovici crossing is running up to ten hours, which has practically paralyzed Konavle. We are therefore insisting that all competent institutions urgently take every available measure to ease this situation as soon as possible.”

Lasic said he had informed all relevant institutions about the situation, that he was in constant contact with the interior minister and with the Dubrovnik-Neretva county prefect, and that certain measures had already been taken. He also appealed directly to residents:

“I ask all the people of Konavle to postpone any non essential travel by personal car, so we can avoid further traffic jams and all the dangers that a situation like this brings.”

Lasic has led the municipality for nine years, and he said himself that a day like this could finally push the relevant authorities toward a permanent fix for the waits at Karasovici.

Which travelers from Serbia does this affect?

There are only two road crossings between Croatia and Montenegro: Karasovici toward Debeli Brijeg, and Vitaljina toward Kobila. When the main one stalls, the other lacks the capacity to absorb the overflow, leaving the entire Adriatic route with no release valve. Travelers from Serbia heading to Budva and Bar via inland routes, through Gostun or Jabuka, are not affected by this queue. It hits those who come down to the coast through Croatia, along with part of the diaspora returning from Switzerland, Italy and Germany toward Kosovo and Albania.

Border police are forecasting lighter traffic on Monday. The next test of the same route comes in two weeks, since August 15, 2026, the peak of ferragosto and the start of the return wave, also falls on a Saturday.