Inside the EXPO 2027 Site: Zones, Pavilions, National Stadium, Legacy

The Expo is being built in the municipality of Surčin, on open land between the city and Nikola Tesla Airport, close to the Sava river. The official FAQ calls it the "Surčin complex". Planning and media sources put it about 15 km from the city centre and about 5 km from the airport, although these distances are not official figures.

For transport options, including the new airport rail line and the planned electric shuttle buses, see our guide on how to get to Expo 2027 Belgrade.

Why you will see different sizes

Search for the size of the Expo site and you will find numbers ranging from 25 to more than 800 hectares. Each one measures a different boundary:

• 25 ha: the exhibition grounds where the pavilions stand. This is the official figure, and it is also the cap the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) sets for Specialised Expos (official facts and figures).
• 83.1 ha and 113 ha: figures from the planning documents. The exhibition unit is 83.1 ha; add 6.9 ha for accommodation and 22.9 ha for commercial use and the whole exhibition complex comes to about 113 ha (eKapija).
• About 167 ha: the exhibition complex plus the National Stadium.
• 813 ha: the wider special-purpose planning area, a figure that appears in the debate around the project (Wikipedia).

So if you are asking how much ground you will walk as a visitor, 25 ha is the relevant number. If you are asking how much of Surčin is being reshaped, the larger figures apply.

The Expo theme is "Play for Humanity: Sport and Music for All". It has three sub-themes: Power of Play (healing, sustainability), Play for Progress (innovation, imagination) and Play Together (active society, peace-building). The programme runs on four tracks: cultural, business, educational and sport.

What has not been published is how those sub-themes translate into physical areas. The organiser has not released an official site map or a list of zones, and we have found no official source linking a sub-theme to a specific zone or building.

What we know about the zones

The only zone named in official material so far is Zone E, home to the Serbian House. Some unofficial guides describe an international pavilions area, a thematic zone, a corporate or best-practice area, three thematic pavilions and a "Giant Dome". None of that appears on the official site, so treat it as unconfirmed until the organiser publishes a map.

Who is taking part

The official participants page lists more than 140 international participants (September 2026), with "more coming soon". The organiser says the total already exceeds Astana 2017, which had 115 countries, making it a record for a Specialised Expo.

Participants include China, Japan, Russia, Germany, Italy, South Korea, Austria, Switzerland, Hungary, Greece and France, along with many Pacific and Caribbean states. Slovakia signed the first participation contract in November 2025, and Slovenia signed in September 2026.

Notable pavilions

Individual pavilion designs have not been widely published yet. What is public is that some countries will not build from scratch: the pavilion contractor NUSSLI, for example, offers ready-made pavilions to participating countries. We will add specific pavilions here as their designs are officially presented.

Serbia's own presence is the Serbian House in Zone E, announced on 4 September 2026. It is a pavilion for Serbia's regions and municipalities, covering culture, tourism, gastronomy and investment.

In September 2026 the organiser signed an agreement with the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Serbia, and the Dedinje cardiovascular institute agreed to present Serbian medicine at the Expo (official news).

The biggest project next to the Expo grounds is the National Stadium: 52,000 seats, built to FIFA and UEFA standards, designed by Mark Fenwick of Fenwick Iribarren, with PowerChina as the main contractor. Construction started on 1 May 2024 with a deadline of December 2026.

That deadline has passed. After a Forbes Srbija site visit, Danas reported on 16 July 2026 that the stadium will not be finished before the Expo and that completion is now likely in early 2028. Works are to pause for three months, from mid-May to mid-August 2027, while the Expo is open. The reported cost is around €460 million, of which about €420 million had been spent by May 2026.

This contradicts earlier government statements that the stadium would be ready before the Expo. No official source says the opening ceremony or any concerts will take place in the stadium, so do not plan around that.

You will still see the stadium's name when you travel: the last station on the new airport railway is called National Stadium/EXPO, and electric shuttle buses are planned to cover the 1.4 km from that station to the Expo grounds. If you are here for football rather than the Expo, our guide to the Eternal Derby between Red Star and Partizan covers the city's existing stadiums.

The official €1.29 billion estimate covers the exhibition grounds and supporting infrastructure. Besides the pavilions, the plan includes:

• the Zemun Polje to Airport to Expo railway, targeted to run from spring 2027;
• a river dock on the Sava;
• an aquatic centre;
• a residential complex;
• new roads and utilities.

An older government list from December 2023 also links wider city projects to the Expo, including the conversion of Belgrade Fair's Hall 1 into an opera house (srbija2027.gov.rs). That page is old, and we could not verify the current status of each project.

The organiser promises "100% post-Expo site utilisation", meaning every building is planned to have a second life once the pavilions close on 15 August 2027. The official list includes:

• the New Belgrade Fairgrounds, a new trade fair venue;
• the EXPO 2027 Belgrade Museum;
• an Auditorium and International Play Forum;
• a Centre for Innovation and Creativity;
• a National Centre for Sport and Physical Activity;
• a National Centre for Musical Innovation;
• three schools, three kindergartens and about 20 sports halls;
• 1,500 housing units, a hotel and retail space.

Property prices in Surčin rose by up to 15% per square metre when the Expo was announced, according to Vreme. For what this means for renters and residents, see Expo 2027 for Belgrade residents and expats.

The legacy also reaches beyond Surčin. The 100 electric buses bought for Expo transport are to join the GSP Belgrade city fleet afterwards.

If you are interested in how earlier building booms shaped the city, our guide to Belgrade's brutalist and Yugoslav architecture is a good companion read.

The official cost of the Expo project, including supporting infrastructure, is €1.29 billion. Balkan Insight reports that the broader "Leap into the Future" investment package, which also covers the stadium, the aquatic centre and other projects, comes to about €17.8 billion.

The project has drawn criticism. A special law exempts Expo contracts from standard public procurement rules, and Balkan Insight found that 86% of Expo tenders, worth more than €330 million, had a single bidder. Transparency Serbia has criticised the lack of public procurement, the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts issued an environmental warning in February 2025, and the European Parliament and the European Commission have both raised concerns (summary with references; EC Serbia 2025 report). The Expo has also become a flagship project during the protests that followed the Novi Sad station canopy collapse in November 2024, in which 16 people died.

The government's position is that the Expo is a catalyst for a new urban district, with every building reused after the event.