Belgrade Centre station: the fifty-year journey

About Belgrade Centre station: the fifty-year journey

By the ULTIMATE Belgrade Editorial Team

Begun in the 1970s, abandoned, revived and finally finished half a century later, Belgrade Centre, known to every Belgrader as Prokop, is now the city’s main railway station, with a soaring glass hall and high-speed trains to Novi Sad and the Hungarian border.

The back story

Prokop means a cut, or a passage dug through the earth, and the name tells the story. In the 1880s, when Belgrade built its first railway station on the marshes beside the Sava, the city needed vast amounts of earth to fill them, and much of it was dug from a gully here, until a deep, steep-sided valley had been carved out by 1898. Railway workers and factory hands settled on its slopes after the First World War, and Prokop became one of the poorest corners of the city, prone to floods and mudslides.

By the 1960s the old Main Station on the river, opened in 1884, was hemmed in by the growing city, and planners began to look for a site for a modern central station at the heart of a new railway junction. The great engineer Branko Žeželj is said to have chosen Prokop, and in 1971 the city adopted the plan: a vast station with eight platforms under a bird-shaped roof.

Few buildings in Europe have taken longer to finish: the first spade went into the ground in 1976, and the station hall opened in 2023.

Half a century in the making

Work began in 1976 and 1977, but the station proved too costly. Building stopped in 1980, and by 1984 the city was openly discussing giving it up. Work resumed in the 1990s, when the enormous concrete slab that roofs the platforms was completed in 1996, only to stop again during the bombing of 1999. A Hungarian developer was chosen in 2005 and dismissed three years later, and for years Prokop was Belgrade’s most famous unfinished building, a concrete deck over empty platforms.

The revival came with a €25.8 million loan from the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development in 2012. Work restarted at the end of 2014 and Belgrade Centre opened on 26 January 2016, still without a station building, with just two trains a day to Novi Sad. Over the next two years the trains moved across from the old station, and on 30 June 2018 the last train left the historic Main Station on the Sava, leaving Belgrade Centre as the city’s main railway station.

The new station hall

The final piece was the station hall. Work on the building began on 8 August 2022, as the first stage of a wider complex called the Gate of Serbia, and the new hall opened in the autumn of 2023. It is a striking space: a long glass hall under a steel roof held up by tall white columns that branch like trees, flooded with light, with views across to the towers of Belgrade Waterfront. Lifts lead down to the platforms, and cafés and a bakery sit beneath a bold geometric mural.

High-speed trains

Belgrade Centre is now the starting point for Serbia’s new high-speed railway. Since March 2022 the Soko trains have whisked passengers to Novi Sad in about 36 minutes, and since October 2025 on to Subotica near the Hungarian border, at up to 200 km/h. International trains to Budapest over the rebuilt line are expected from December 2026, bringing the Hungarian capital within about three hours.

For travellers

The station sits in Savski Venac, a little south of the old town, so allow ten minutes by taxi to Hotel Moskva, or take bus 36, which runs a circular route to the old town and Slavija every 20 minutes. City buses, trams and trolleybuses in Belgrade have been free for everyone since 1 January 2025. The ticket office in the main hall is open around the clock, and Soko trains need a seat reservation, which you can buy at the station or online from Srbijavoz.

Fifty years in the making

From Serbian Railways, the City of Belgrade and contemporary reports.

Listings, fees and opening hours change, so please contact Belgrade Centre station: the fifty-year journey directly before you visit.