BELGRADE · 15 MAY TO 15 AUGUST 2027 · 93 DAYS
Be in Serbia while the whole region is looking at it.
EXPO 2027 is the first Specialised Expo ever held in the Western Balkans: ninety-three days, four million visitors expected, and more than 130 states and organisations with a reason to be in Belgrade. For one summer the partners, distributors, ministries and press you would otherwise chase across a year are in one city. KORIDOR prepares that presence and runs it on the ground.
WHAT IT IS
A Specialised Expo, sanctioned by the BIE.
Specialised Expos run to a single theme on one purpose-built site. Belgrade’s is Play for Humanity: Sport and Music for All, on 25 hectares in Surčin beside Nikola Tesla Airport, inside a masterplan that also carries a 52,000-seat national stadium and an aquatic centre. The BIE puts the programme at more than 8,000 events across the ninety-three days, and expects more than four million visitors.
The practical point for a company is simpler than the programme. For one summer, the region’s buyers, delegations, ministries and press are in the same city, and there is a published route to being in the room with them.
WHERE A COMPANY CAN ACTUALLY BE
- 01
International Pavilions
National participants build here. Access runs through your country’s official participation, not through a commercial booking. If your state is in, its commissioner is usually the cheaper and higher-status door.
- 02
Thematic Zone
The organiser’s own programme: three thematic pavilions (Power of Play, Play for Progress, Play Together) plus The Forum, a talks-and-panels venue the organiser describes as built for professionals and industry leaders.
- 03
Corporate & Best Practice Area
The part of the site built for companies. A corporate pavilion or an on-site activation sits here, and it is arranged with the organiser’s commercialisation office.
WHY IT MATTERS
Ninety-three days that will not come round again.
Serbia has never hosted anything like this, and will not host it twice. That is the whole commercial argument: for one summer the cost of reaching this market collapses, and afterwards it goes back to what it was.
It happens once
A Specialised Expo is sanctioned by the Bureau International des Expositions and held on one purpose-built site, to one theme. Belgrade’s is the first ever held in the Western Balkans. A country builds this once. Nothing about the next twelve months repeats the year after.
The audience arrives to you
The BIE expects more than four million visitors across ninety-three days and puts the programme at more than 8,000 events. The ministries, national commissioners, delegations, buyers and press your team would otherwise chase across a year of separate trips are in one city, for one summer, with reasons to take meetings.
The city is being rebuilt around it
The exhibition sits on 25 hectares in Surčin beside Nikola Tesla Airport, inside a masterplan that also carries a 52,000-seat national stadium and an aquatic centre. Work at that scale is done by companies, supplied by companies and serviced by companies, and every one of them is working to the same deadline.
WHO WILL BE THERE
139 international participants, their commissioners, and the companies already buying in.
The states
On 13 August 2026 the organiser’s own participants page read 139 international participants. That count includes international organisations, not only states.
It is not a plan on paper. Representatives of over 130 countries and international organisations met in Belgrade in March 2026 for the first International Participants Meeting.
The institutions
Three bodies decide different things, and knowing which decides what saves months. The Bureau International des Expositions in Paris sanctions the exhibition and sets the rules a Specialised Expo runs under. EXPO 2027 D.O.O. Belgrade builds the site, runs the programme and decides who may be present commercially. Each participating country appoints its own section commissioner, who decides what goes inside that country’s pavilion.
The Gulf, as of 13 August 2026
Qatar is named among the participants on the organiser’s own list. Saudi Arabia went further: the organiser announced a signed participation agreement on 20 April 2026, and on 24 June 2026 Expo 2030 Riyadh and Expo 2027 Belgrade signed a cooperation agreement in Belgrade covering governance, site development, participant management and operations.
Gulf News reported on 10 November 2025 that the United Arab Emirates had reaffirmed its participation and planned a pavilion; on the check date the UAE was not among the participants named on the organiser’s page, and we do not upgrade a press report into a confirmation. For Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman we found no announcement and no listing. That means we could not confirm it. It does not mean a country has declined.
If your state is in, its commissioner is usually a cheaper and higher status door than anything sold commercially, and it is worth knocking on first.
The companies
Companies come in by a separate route, through the organiser’s partner and sponsor programme, and the categories are being taken: Telekom Srbija announced a Platinum sponsorship in February 2026.
December 2026Pavilion units handed to participants
That is the organiser’s plan for the international pavilions, and it is the date every other date hangs off. Fitting out, content, staffing and freight are all decided before that month rather than after it, so a conversation opened this autumn still has room in it and one opened next spring does not.
WHAT THE ORGANISER OFFERS
There is no “book a stand” button. There is a selection procedure.
Companies come in through an open invitation for partners, and the choice belongs to the organiser. You send a letter of intent naming the partner category you want and the value and type of partnership you propose, together with a signed declaration that no grounds for exclusion apply. It is weighed on the quality of the programme you bring, its fit with the exhibition’s values, whether it commercialises the event too far, your financial standing and your social contribution. Applications go to the organiser’s commercialisation office.
What a partner can get
- Corporate pavilion
- On-site activation
- Product branding and sales
- The organiser’s channels
- Tickets and access
- A contact line at the organiser
What is not published: a price, and a deadline. Neither exists in public, and the benefits list carries its own note that it may change and that terms are settled in the contract. Any fixed package quoted to you today was invented by whoever quoted it.
HOW KORIDOR HELPS
An exhibition is not a stand. It is a meeting programme with a building attached.
KORIDOR is a commercial desk in Belgrade. Around EXPO 2027 we do the work we do the rest of the year, compressed into a window where the people you need are all in one city: find the right companies, reach the people who can decide, prepare what has to be ready before the first meeting rather than after it, and carry every conversation that matters to a named next step. You define the objective and keep every commercial decision. We do the ground work.
- 01
Establish what is actually open to you
Three routes exist and they are not equal: your country’s national pavilion, the organiser’s Corporate & Best Practice Area, or a presence in Belgrade during the exhibition without being on the site at all. We put the question to the organiser’s commercialisation office and, where your state is participating, to its commissioner, and we come back with what each of them confirms in writing, including what it costs, what it does not include, and the date by which a decision has to be made. If the honest answer is that none of the three is worth your budget, that is the answer you get.
- 02
Prepare and submit the partner application
If a partner category fits, this is the most concrete work on this page. We read the categories against what your company actually wants and say plainly when the answer is that none of them fits. When one does, we draft the letter of intent and the partnership proposal in the structure the organiser’s published criteria reward (the value and quality of the programme, its fit with the exhibition’s values, restraint about commercialising the event, financial stability and social contribution), assemble the supporting dossier and the declaration on grounds for exclusion, route it to the organiser’s commercialisation office, and handle the correspondence that follows. Selection is discretionary and the decision is the organiser’s: we prepare and submit, and we do not promise selection. We do not sell or resell exhibition space or the organiser’s inventory. Where the application is not the right route, we build the meeting programme around the exhibition instead, which needs no partner status at all.
- 03
Write the requirement before anything is booked
Most exhibition money is lost here. Before a stand, a flight or a partnership application exists, we put on one page what the presence is for: which buyers, distributors, producers, importers or institutions you want in front of, what you are asking each of them for, and what a good outcome looks like in orders, agreements or a shortlist your team can act on. It is short enough to argue with, and everything after it is measured against it.
- 04
Find the companies, not the crowd
Four million visitors is not your market; a few dozen companies are. We search Serbia and the region against your product, commercial goal and partner requirements, contact the decision makers directly, confirm who is genuinely interested, and ask the commercial questions (volumes, terms, lead times, certification, who can actually approve a deal) before your team commits travel and time to any of them.
- 05
Prepare the material the other side will ask for
Company and product documentation in the language and form a Serbian or regional counterparty expects, pricing and terms shaped for a first order rather than a brochure, samples coordinated and delivered where they need to be, and the certification questions answered in advance instead of in the meeting. Where formal legal, technical, regulatory, financial or certification expertise is required, we bring in a qualified specialist partner and coordinate their work with the commercial process. Each specialist remains responsible for conclusions within their professional scope.
- 06
Build the diary, not the stand
A stand fills with whoever walks past. A diary fills with the people you chose. We book meetings before the doors open (on the exhibition site, at the companies’ own premises, and in Belgrade around the event) and we sequence them so that three days in Serbia are three days of decisions rather than three days of introductions. Transfers, venues and interpreting are coordinated around that schedule, not the other way round.
- 07
Represent you on the ground, and after the doors close
Your company represented in Belgrade within an agreed written mandate: we attend, take the meetings your team cannot, keep each conversation on your commercial requirements, and record what was established, what is still open and who owes the next action. You receive one written summary per counterparty and a recommendation on which ones to continue with. Then we keep those conversations alive, because agreements out of an exhibition are signed in the months after it, not during it.
START WITH ONE REQUIREMENT
8 months to opening. A market you have not entered takes longer than that.
Tell us the product or the partner profile you need in Serbia. We come back with what participation is actually available for 2027, what the organiser confirms in writing, and what is worth doing before then, including the case for doing nothing at the exhibition itself and everything around it.