Serbia 🇷🇸

Serbia is a country in Southeast Europe, one of the 9 entries this site files under that subregion. Its full official name is Republic of Serbia. Government sits in Belgrade.

It is home to roughly 6.6 million people, placing it 109th of 249 by population — between Nicaragua above it and Bulgaria below. Among the 9 entries in Southeast Europe it ranks 3rd by area and 2nd by population.

It covers 88,361 km², which ranks it 113th of the 249 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Jordan and just ahead of Azerbaijan. Put next to a country most people can picture, it is almost exactly the same size as Jordan.

Serbia has no coastline of its own, so every ship-borne import and export crosses somebody else's border first. The good news is that the sea is only one frontier away: Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro have coastline, which makes them the obvious routes for freight heading to a port.

That geography has practical consequences. Landlocked countries carry higher freight costs than coastal ones because goods change hands, transport mode and jurisdiction more often, and because a neighbour's road, rail or customs problem becomes Serbia's problem too. It is also why transit agreements with bordering states, and access to their ports, tend to matter more in Serbia's foreign policy than the distance on a map would suggest.

Of the countries on Serbia's borders, Hungary, Kosovo and North Macedonia are landlocked as well, so a route in that direction only moves the problem along. The remaining borders are the ones that lead, eventually, to salt water.

Coastal countries on the border:

• 🇷🇴 Romania
• 🇧🇬 Bulgaria
• 🇭🇷 Croatia
• 🇧🇦 Bosnia and Herzegovina
• 🇲🇪 Montenegro

The coordinates the dataset gives are 44.0° N, 21.0° E, which puts it in the northern hemisphere, roughly 4,898 km from the equator, in what geographers would call temperate latitudes.

Mongolia sit at almost exactly the same latitude on other parts of the globe.

Its land neighbours number 8: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro and Romania. The largest of them by area is Romania, which is also the most populous. Together those neighbours hold about 46.3 million people.

It has no sea coast of its own. That is true of 45 of the 249 entries here, so all seaborne trade runs through a neighbour's ports. 3 of its neighbours, Hungary, Kosovo and North Macedonia, are landlocked too. You can see the full picture on the landlocked countries page.

Spread across 88,361 km², that works out at about 75 people per square kilometre, which makes it less crowded than the typical entry on this list. For comparison, the median entry on this list sits near 91 per square kilometre.

People from Serbia are called Serbians.

Serbian is the only official language. It shares that with Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo.

Against Europe as a whole it is the 20th most populous of 53 entries, and it accounts for 14% of everyone living in Southeast Europe.

Zoom in from the world to Southeast Europe and Serbia sits 2nd of 9 by population and 3rd by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is Romania just above and Bulgaria just below, which is a more honest comparison set than a global league table.

Romania is the largest of the group by population, and every entry in Southeast Europe has its own page here if you want to work through the whole neighbourhood rather than one country at a time.

• 🇷🇴 Romania
• 🇧🇬 Bulgaria
• 🇷🇴 Romania

It uses the Serbian dinar (дин., RSD). It is issued for Serbia alone.

The top-level domain is .rs. The international dialling code is +381. Its ISO codes are rs and SRB, which is what most databases and flag files use.

If a quiz asks for the capital of Serbia, the answer is Belgrade.

It holds a seat at the United Nations, one of 192 entries here that do. The other 57 entries are territories, dependencies or observers, which is why totals on this site run to 249 rather than the familiar 195.

The Serbian dinar (RSD) is used only in Serbia among the 249 entries on this site. Its own currency is one of the clearest markers of an economy that sets its own monetary policy rather than importing somebody else's.

Language reaches wider still. Serbian is listed for 3 entries here, Serbia among them, so a visitor who speaks it can be understood across a large part of the map. Shared language tends to outlive the empires, trade routes and migrations that spread it, which is why the linguistic map and the political one rarely line up.