Gradiska old Sava bridge border crossing to open by Friday
After a meeting of all services at the crossing, Bosnia's Indirect Taxation Authority points to Thursday or Friday. Passengers, buses and empty trucks up to 20 tons can pass.
The old Gradiska-Stara Gradiska border crossing, on the border between Republika Srpska and Croatia, could reopen on Thursday, October 29, and no later than Friday, October 30, 2026. The exact hour has not been announced. Until now officials had only said the bridge would open “by the end of October,” so this is the first time specific days have been mentioned.
What was said after the meeting at the crossing?
On Tuesday, October 27, all the services working at the crossing met in Gradiska. The Indirect Taxation Authority of Bosnia and Herzegovina (UIO), which includes the customs service, told Nezavisne Novine that it and the Border Police of Bosnia and Herzegovina are ready to begin work.
“It was concluded that the Indirect Taxation Authority of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which includes the customs service, as well as the Border Police of Bosnia and Herzegovina, are fully ready to begin work at the Gradiska-Stara Gradiska border crossing,” the Authority said.
The permit to resume traffic must be issued by the Ministry of Transport and Communications of Republika Srpska. According to the information available to the Authority, the crossing could open on Thursday or Friday.
The crossing is not being opened by Republika Srpska Roads, as the company’s acting director Miroslav Jankovic stressed in a statement to Nezavisne Novine:
“We are finishing the construction work so that this is possible. But we are not the ones who carry out the opening itself, that is the Border Police and the Indirect Taxation Authority. People are on the ground and we are meeting the conditions for it to happen then. The announcement is that it will be tomorrow or the day after.”
Who will be allowed across the old bridge?
International traffic will be permitted for passengers, buses and freight vehicles with a load capacity of up to 20 tons, meaning empty trucks. The steel bridge and the overpass passed load testing and were declared safe for vehicles of that weight, and the overpass, the nearby parking lot and the access roads have been repaved.
The idea, as a source for Nezavisne Novine explained earlier, is to move empty trucks onto the old bridge and so relieve the new crossing.
Why was the crossing closed in the first place?
The 70-year-old bridge over the Sava was closed on May 19, 2026, when part of the safety barrier collapsed. Police were notified around one o’clock after midnight. Since then traffic has run through the new Gradiska Novi Most-Gornji Varos crossing, where the UIO also moved its customs office. That location keeps operating after August 19, when the temporary decision expired, because Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia signed a new border crossings agreement on June 8.
Customs service at the new crossing only recently gained a legal basis. On October 7, the UIO Governing Board adopted, at an electronic session, the rulebooks that board member Zijad Krnjic had blocked several times before.
What comes after the opening?
The opening is not the end of the work. Jankovic said earlier that new works are planned on the bridge and that traffic will be suspended again when they start:
“The works are expected in 2027. There will be another suspension, but the deadlines will be short and it will be finished quickly.”
Republika Srpska Roads has issued a tender for two overpasses leading to the bridge itself, and there are two possible scenarios: repairing the existing ones or building new ones. BL Portal earlier could not find out from the Border Police of Bosnia and Herzegovina or from Croatia’s Interior Ministry whether the Croatian side is ready to work at the old location.
