Right, we’re going to stir things up a little. Declaring one country “the best” in the Balkans is, frankly, an impossible task, and we know it. Every destination on this list has beaches, culture, incredible food, dramatic scenery, and a nightlife scene worth writing home about. But where’s the fun in saying that? Instead, we’ve picked the single biggest strength of each of our five Balkan favourites — the thing it does better than anywhere else in the region. Think of it as less of a verdict and more of a very enjoyable argument starter. We fully expect you to disagree with us in the comments, and we absolutely cannot wait.
The Balkans is one of Europe’s most rewarding and endlessly surprising regions. Tucked into the south-eastern corner of the continent, it packs more history, natural drama, culinary brilliance, and raw energy into a relatively small area than almost anywhere else you could name. But if you had to pick just one country for your next trip, which would it be? We’ve put five of the finest head to head and given each one its moment in the spotlight. The debate starts now.
Bosnia & Herzegovina — Best for Culture & History
🏆 Biggest Strength: A living, breathing lesson in resilience, complexity, and coexistence
If Albania wins on coastline, Bosnia & Herzegovina wins on something altogether more profound: soul. No country in the Balkans, arguably no country in Europe, offers quite the same depth of human story as this small, extraordinary nation. To travel here is to engage with history in the most immediate, moving, and ultimately uplifting way imaginable.
Sarajevo is unlike any other city on the continent. Walk its streets and within a few minutes you’ll pass a 16th-century Ottoman mosque, a 19th-century Austro-Hungarian cathedral, a vibrant Jewish quarter, and a building still bearing the scars of a siege that ended less than thirty years ago. The city wears its extraordinary layered history openly and without self-pity, and the result is one of the most compelling, thought-provoking urban experiences in Europe. The warmth of its people, the strength of its coffee culture, and the quality of its food make it a place you’ll find yourself thinking about long after you’ve returned home.
Beyond the capital, Mostar’s rebuilt Stari Most bridge is one of the Balkans’ most iconic images, a powerful symbol of reconstruction and hope that is even more moving in person than in photographs. The medieval village of Počitelj, the ancient city of Jajce with its waterfall tumbling beneath a fortress, and the rural heartlands of the Neretva Valley all add layers to a country that rewards slow, curious, engaged travel more than almost anywhere else on this list.
Bosnia demands more from its visitors than a beach destination does. It asks you to engage, to sit with complexity, and to listen. In return, it offers a perspective on history and humanity that is genuinely transformative, and that, in our view, is the most valuable thing travel can give you.
🗺 Why it wins: For travellers who want their holidays to mean something, Bosnia & Herzegovina delivers an emotional and cultural richness that no other Balkan destination can match.
Serbia — Best for Nightlife
🏆 Biggest Strength: The most electric, exhilarating nightlife scene in the entire region
There are cities with good nightlife, there are cities with great nightlife, and then there is Belgrade. Serbia’s capital doesn’t just have the best party scene in the Balkans, it has one of the best party scenes in the world, full stop. If you’ve never experienced a Saturday night on the banks of the Danube, with music thumping from a flotilla of river bars until well past sunrise, you simply haven’t seen what a city night out can truly be.
Belgrade’s splavovi, floating river clubs moored along the Sava and Danube, are the stuff of legend among European nightlife aficionados. These sprawling, multi-deck venues host everything from turbo-folk nights to world-class electronic music, and they operate on a timetable that would make most Western European cities weep: things don’t really get going until 2am, and finishing before dawn is considered leaving early. The city’s underground club scene is equally formidable, with venues like Drugstore and Tunnel drawing internationally renowned DJs to intimate, brilliantly curated spaces.
But Belgrade’s appeal isn’t purely nocturnal. By day it’s a fascinating, slightly rough-around-the-edges city with a genuinely compelling history, excellent food, a thriving café culture, and the imposing Kalemegdan Fortress watching over the confluence of two great rivers. The Skadarlija bohemian quarter is one of the most charming streets in the Balkans for an evening meal. And Serbia beyond Belgrade, the monasteries of Studenica, the landscapes of Tara National Park, the wine region of Župa, is a revelation for those willing to explore further.
But let’s be honest: you’re coming for the nights. And Serbia will deliver nights you’ll be telling stories about for years.
🗺 Why it wins: Belgrade’s nightlife is in a category entirely its own, a genuinely world-class party scene that combines scale, quality, and staying power in a way no other Balkan city comes close to matching.
Montenegro — Best for Landscapes
🏆 Biggest Strength: Jaw-dropping scenery packed into Europe’s second-smallest country
Montenegro means “Black Mountain”, and one look at this tiny, dramatic country explains exactly why. Packing an almost implausible variety of landscapes into an area roughly the size of Wales, Montenegro is a destination that consistently leaves visitors utterly speechless. Mountains, canyons, glacial lakes, medieval walled towns, and a fjord-like bay that rivals anything in Scandinavia, all within a two-hour drive of each other. It’s almost showing off, frankly.
The Bay of Kotor is Montenegro’s undisputed showpiece: a dramatic, winding inlet flanked by vertiginous limestone mountains and dotted with medieval villages, Venetian fortifications, and tiny island churches. The fortified old town of Kotor itself is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, a perfectly preserved maze of Venetian streets and Baroque churches enclosed by ancient walls that climb straight up the mountain behind the town. Watching the light change on the bay at sunset from those walls is one of the great travel experiences in the Balkans.
Head inland and the drama only intensifies. Durmitor National Park is a UNESCO-listed wilderness of glacial lakes, dense forest, and peaks that top 2,500 metres, offering some of the finest hiking, skiing, and white-water rafting in south-eastern Europe. The Tara River Canyon, the deepest canyon in Europe, cuts through the park in a series of emerald gorges so beautiful they barely seem real. And the ancient royal capital of Cetinje, the Adriatic resort town of Budva, and the near-perfectly preserved medieval village of Perast each add their own distinct character to a country that feels, at times, like the greatest hits of European scenery compiled into one place.
🗺 Why it wins: For sheer, concentrated landscape drama, Montenegro is unbeatable in the Balkans. No other country in the region packs this much natural and architectural beauty into such a compact, accessible space.
Slovenia — Best for Food & Wine
🏆 Biggest Strength: The most sophisticated, creative, and delicious food scene in the region
Slovenia is the quiet overachiever of the Balkans, a small, immaculately kept country that consistently punches far above its weight in almost every category, but perhaps nowhere more impressively than at the table. For a nation of just two million people, Slovenia’s food and wine culture is extraordinary: nuanced, creative, deeply rooted in local tradition, and increasingly recognised on the world stage as something genuinely special.
The capital Ljubljana has quietly become one of Europe’s most exciting food cities. Its compact, walkable old town is lined with restaurants, wine bars, and market stalls showcasing the best of Slovenian produce, and the quality is consistently remarkable. The Open Kitchen market on Fridays brings together the country’s finest chefs and food producers in a celebration of local ingredients that is as enjoyable as any food festival we’ve attended anywhere in Europe. Ljubljana also boasts more Michelin-starred restaurants per capita than almost any comparable European city, a statistic that surprises most visitors but really, really shouldn’t.
Slovenia’s wine regions are equally impressive and remain one of the best-kept secrets in European viticulture. The Brda region, bordering Italy’s Friuli, produces elegant, mineral whites and rich orange wines of genuine world-class quality. The Vipava Valley is one of Europe’s most exciting emerging wine regions, with a new generation of passionate winemakers crafting bottles that are attracting serious international attention. And the Karst region is home to Teran, a distinctive, tannic red wine made from the Refošk grape that is like nothing else you’ll taste in the Balkans.
Beyond Ljubljana and the wine regions, Lake Bled provides one of the continent’s most iconic backdrops for a long, lazy lunch. The Soča Valley, impossibly, luminously turquoise, rivals any Alpine scenery in Western Europe. And Slovenian hospitality, quietly warm and impeccably gracious, makes every meal feel like a genuine occasion.
🗺 Why it wins: For food lovers and wine enthusiasts, Slovenia is the standout destination in the Balkans, a small country with a culinary culture of remarkable depth, creativity, and quality that consistently exceeds all expectations.
Albania — Best for Beaches
🏆 Biggest Strength: The most beautiful, unspoilt coastline in the Balkans
Let’s get one thing straight: Albania‘s beaches are spectacular. We’re talking impossibly turquoise water, dramatic clifftop backdrops, and stretches of sand that, for now, at least, remain blissfully free of the crowds that have swamped much of the Mediterranean. If you haven’t swum in the Ionian Sea off the Albanian Riviera yet, it belongs at the very top of your travel bucket list.
The Albanian Riviera runs for roughly 200 kilometres along the country’s south-western coast, and it is, quite simply, one of Europe’s last great coastal secrets. Towns like Ksamil, with its tiny offshore islands and crystal-clear shallows, and Himara, a characterful hillside town perched above a gorgeous bay, offer the kind of beach holiday that Greece and Croatia used to deliver before everyone found out about them. The water is warm, the scenery is dramatic, and the prices are, compared to anywhere west of here, almost laughably low.
Further up the coast, Sazan Island and the Karaburun Peninsula form a protected marine park of extraordinary beauty, accessible only by boat and largely untouched by development. Snorkelling and diving here is world-class, with visibility that will genuinely astound you. And the beaches around Dhermi? Pebbled, pristine, and backed by mountains that tumble straight into the sea, they’re the kind of thing you see on a screensaver and assume must be photoshopped.
Albania’s beaches won’t stay this quiet forever. The secret is getting out, development is creeping in, and the crowds will follow. But right now, in this golden window, the Albanian Riviera is the finest coastal destination in the Balkans, and arguably one of the finest in all of Europe.
🗺 Why it wins: Nowhere else in the Balkans delivers this combination of breathtaking coastal scenery, warm clear water, and genuine seclusion, all at prices that make the whole thing feel almost too good to be true.
So, Which Is the Best Country in the Balkans?
Here’s the honest answer: it entirely depends on what you’re after. If you’re chasing the perfect beach holiday, Albania is your answer. If you want to travel somewhere that genuinely changes how you see the world, get yourself to Bosnia. If you live for a great night out, Serbia will become your favourite country on earth. If landscapes are what moves you, Montenegro will leave you breathless. And if food and wine are your primary reason for travelling, as they should be, then Slovenia is the one.
The Balkans rewards curious travellers more than almost any other region in Europe. These five countries are wildly different in character, yet share a generosity of spirit, a richness of history, and a depth of experience that the continent’s more-visited corners often struggle to match. Whatever your travel style, your perfect Balkan destination is waiting for you here.
The real question isn’t which country is best, it’s which one you’re visiting first. Browse our full collection of Balkan trips and start planning your next adventure today. Your untravelled path is closer than you think.
We know you have opinions on this one, and we want to hear them! Which Balkan country do you think deserves the crown? Drop your verdict in the comments below, and don’t forget to share this post with a fellow travel lover who’s ready for their next great adventure.
Written by James Chisnall
The post The Best Balkan Country to Visit? Here’s Our Verdict appeared first on Untravelled Paths.
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