Belgrade: Football, Culture, and a City That Lives Both

By Luke Bajic with 3 Points Travel for The Atlantic Dispatch

When Luke Bajic travelled with 3 Points Travel to Belgrade, it wasn’t just about ticking a city off the map. It was about uncovering a part of his own heritage and experiencing one of Europe’s most passionate footballing cities. The trip was designed around 3 Points’ unique approach: combining football with culture, food, and local experiences you couldn’t simply Google. What Luke found was a city of raw history, vibrant community, and football that is lived as much as it is played.

What Made You Decide to Travel to Belgrade?

Family. I’m half-Serbian. My grandparents moved to the UK in the 1950s, first settling in Bedford before making their home in Leicester – the city where my dad, and later I, was born.

Until this trip, I had never been to Serbia. But as I grew older, I became more intrigued by that side of my heritage – the culture, the history, and the stories of a country that had been through so much in such recent memory.

At home, football was always Leicester. That was our team, our family tradition. But Serbia pulled at me in a different way. I didn’t have a “Serbian club” of my own, but I found myself following the league more closely over the years, reading, watching, learning. It felt like an itch I needed to scratch – to go there, to experience it first-hand, and to understand what football really means in Serbia.

What Did the 3 Points Curated Weekend Consist Of?

After knowing my preference for Belgrade, they did the rest. Football was the core, but the weekend was built around more than just 90 minutes.

The basic package gets you flights, accommodation and matchday tickets. They went one step further – I sampled four clubs across Belgrade, had backstage access and stadium tours with locals who live and breathe it. Off the pitch, it was about proper local spots: food, bars, and the kind of places you stumble into at 2 am.

It’s the sort of trip you couldn’t piece together off Google. That mix of mystery and insider access really impressed me.

What Was the Football Culture Like in Belgrade?

It’s Partizan. Excuse the pun. You’re either red and white, or you’re black and white.

Walk around Dorćol and its Partizan everywhere – murals, bollards, and lampposts painted in black and white. Head south into Senjak and the city shifts – red and white on bridges, restaurant walls, even front doors. The city wears its allegiances openly, and you feel the divide in its streets.

Step inside the stadiums and the scale of history becomes clear. Red Star are European champions of ’91, their museum built around that gleaming European Cup and hundreds of pennants from continental adventures, including two against my Leicester City. Partizan were European runners-up in ’66, Champions League regulars in the 2000s, while Red Star have been flying the flag more recently in Europe’s top competitions.

Together, the two clubs dominate the city. Not just as football teams, but as cultural institutions. In Belgrade, football isn’t background noise. It’s heritage, identity, and history painted all around you.

What Makes Belgrade a Unique City?

It’s a city that pulses with creativity, community, and defiance all at once. Belgrade carries the marks of empires past: Ottoman relics, Austro-Hungarian streets in Zemun, Tito-era brutalism, and the looming fortress where the Sava meets the Danube.

It’s vibrant and human – cafés in leafy Dorćol humming until dawn, strangers striking up conversations on the trams, splavovi lighting the rivers. And it’s defiant – tens of thousands taking to the streets in peaceful protest, pushing for change with the same resilience that has always defined the city.

Recommendations: Things to Do in Belgrade

Kalemegdan Fortress: Watch the sun set where the Danube and Sava meet, ideally with a can of LAV pivo.
Dorćol: Explore its café culture in the morning (don’t miss D59B for coffee). Later, head to Dorćol Platz or the Silosi warehouses by the river for an afternoon drink.
Tram Ride: Belgrade’s public transport is free – one of the best ways to feel the city.
The Church of Saint Sava: A must-see landmark in Vračar.
Stadium Tours: Visit both Partizan and Red Star, but also explore neighbourhood clubs like Zemun and OFK Belgrade.
Eat Local: Try ćevapi – grilled minced meat with somun bread, onions, and kajmak – at Republika Grill or Walter. Don’t miss the city’s markets for colour, smell, and chatter.

Experiencing the Stadiums

Favourite? I can’t choose. Each stadium’s history isn’t hidden in plaques and statues — it’s etched into every creaking stair, ageing chair, every scarred concrete wall. Safe to say, none of the stadia were built this century.

Walking into Stadion Partizana just felt like… football. No “spaceship” stadia, barely a roof. Just concrete and steel, that classic running track around a grass pitch, and years of colour layered upon colour.

Across the river in Zemun, FK’s City Stadium has another running track — this time made of red, earthy dust. A classic Eastern European athletic arena. Official capacity around 10k, but much of it is now closed off. Entry through the intimidating northern gate is reserved only for the ultra group — definitely ne parkiraj. The rest of us use the south gate, plastered with murals and now neighbouring the office of a car rental company. Money at this level is tight.

Obilić, now extinct but once Yugoslav champions, is a real “forgotten stadium,” with grass growing longer than on your local Sunday league pitch.

OFK’s Omladinski Stadion, another crumbling concrete beauty, is mostly standing. The adjoining clubhouse is worth an espresso. This one is getting a revamp while top-division OFK play elsewhere. As with many in Belgrade, the doors are wide open for a sneak peek.

Then there’s the Marakana, Red Star’s fortress. Its nickname nods to the legendary Brazilian stadium, and inside, it lives up to it. The museum that crowns the entry pours history into you, and the staircase bannisters feel like they belong in my gran’s 1970s hallway — warm, familiar, worn down by years of devotion. And that tunnel… more than a passageway, it’s legend. It sweeps beneath the North Stand, accompanied by Delije (Red Star’s main ultra group) graffiti, dim lighting, the roar of tens of thousands above, and the rattling of gates from a few who sneak down underneath. Without a doubt, the most intense tunnel in Europe.

The Zemun Experience

Zemun was different. Warm, welcoming, almost village-like in its community feel. The stewards greeted me like an old friend, explaining that the ticket seller wouldn’t arrive for another ten minutes (classically pointing at the correct hand on my watch). So I took a wander before paying just 400 dinars (about £3) in cash for entry.

It’s a classic community athletics ground, with a few quirks that give it character. Behind the outer walls sits a wide concourse doubling as a car park and, improbably, a tyre storage area for the neighbouring rental company. Step through, though, and the Northern Gate comes into view, next to the sole remaining seating of the old stand, spelling out Zemun, of course. Behind this, the ultras enter.

Families filled the south stand, kids darting around and neighbours chatting like it was a street festival. As I moved pitchside to watch the teams emerge, even the substitutes spotted me and offered a nod and a friendly “Ćao.” The ultras drifted in gradually, migrating toward their spot behind the west goal. Each arrival raised the noise until their presence finally hit full force, just as Milićević (#70) opened the scoring in the 8th minute. A bright flare cracked, smoke rising to blur the distant church spire on the skyline.

At halftime, the same steward who had mimed pointing to my watch earlier wheeled out a table stacked with pumpkin and sunflower seeds for the crowd. By sunset, Zemun were surging — turning a 2–1 deficit into a 3–2 comeback win. When the whistle blew, kids poured over the fences with ease, high-fiving goal scorers and sprinting across the grass as if it were theirs.

And in many ways, it is. That was Zemun: a community stitched together by football.

Why Choose a 3 Points Weekend?

Because the mystery is the magic. Anyone can book flights and a hotel, but with 3 Points, you don’t know your destination until you’re at departures, opening your reveal card. That cranks the buzz up another level.

It takes football travel back to what it should be: new cities, fresh stadiums, and local fan culture. No hassle, no endless planning – just a weekend that throws you head-first into football and culture, often in places you’d never think to book yourself.

How Does Belgrade Compare to Other Football Cities?

Belgrade’s football scene is passion and colour everywhere you turn, shaped by a fierce divide. Facilities may be basic, sometimes crumbling, but the raw emotion more than makes up for it.

This is a city that has produced outstanding football talent for generations, and you can feel why. Football isn’t just played here – it’s lived. It’s in the culture, on the streets, in the conversations – always intense, always on the edge.

Like Serie A, it’s tribal, emotional, and lived at life-or-death levels. In Belgrade, football carries history – flaking paint, concrete stands, graffiti, and tunnels echoing with past triumphs.

The Eternal Derby between Red Star and Partizan distils all of this into ninety minutes, making Belgrade not just another footballing city, but one of Europe’s greatest stages.