The BudapestâÂÂBelgrade railway connects the capital cities of Budapest, Hungary and Belgrade, Serbia, linking the Budapest Keleti railway station with Belgrade Centre railway station. Valued at $2.89 billion, the high-speed rail line is part of the planned BudapestâÂÂBelgradeâÂÂSkopjeâÂÂAthens railway, an international route across Central and Southeast Europe. It is a flagship China-CEEC project under Beijing's Belt and Road Initiative, aimed at connecting the Chinese-operated Port of Piraeus in Greece with Central Europe.
The railway line between Budapest and Belgrade was used also by the Orient Express until 1914. The Orient Express was launched on 5 June 1883. It connected Paris and Constantinople (later renamed Istanbul).
The railway line between Budapest and Belgrade passes mainly the Bács-Kiskun County and the Serbian province of Vojvodina.
The outdated railway between Belgrade and Budapest will be modernised. The travel time should be decreased from eight hours to three and a half hours, and the maximum speed of the track is designed to be up to on the Serbian section and on the Hungarian section. When the project is complete, the journey between Budapest and Belgrade will be reduced to 3h 15m. The modernization is already complete, with full services running on the Serbian side up to Subotica, and the Hungary part is currently going through final testing with passenger services set to begin in March 2026.
The Hungarian section () of the project was announced in 2015 to cost HUF 472 billion and expected to be completed as of 2017âÂÂ2018. Currently it is expected to cost HUF 949 billion ($3.6 billion) with interest.
In Hungary, the project is carried out by KÃÂnai-Magyar Vasúti Nonprofit Zrt (Chinese-Hungarian Railway Nonprofit Ltd.), a Hungarian-Chinese joint venture of MÃÂV Zrt. with China Railway International Corporation (CRIC) and China Railway International Group (CRIG). According to one estimate, the works on this section could begin in 2021, as one year is needed for the public procurement procedures, and two years for the planning and negotiation phase. The investment is widely criticised as it will never recover its costs.
The construction of the Hungarian part of the railway, 152 km, was started in October 2021 and has already been completed, with final testing in place with passenger services set to start in mid-March 2026 .
The modernized passenger railway will begin at Budapest Keleti, with different types of passenger services going south:
In Serbia some , one of the segments, the -long section Belgrade-Stara Pazova was reconstructed by China Communications Construction Company (CCCC) together with China Railways International (CRI), with the investment of $350.1 million, funded with a loan from the Export-Import Bank of China. The section Stara PazovaâÂÂNovi Sad was reconstructed by the Russian RZD International, financed with Russian credit. The reconstruction of the section Novi SadâÂÂSubotica began in 2022, with estimated cost of â¬943 million, built by CCCC and a duration of 33 months, during which this section will be closed.
The construction of the railway line in Serbia started in September 2017, when the construction of the ÃÂortanovci tunnel began. The 75 km railway for speed up to 200 km/h between Belgrade and Novi Sad opened on 19 March 2022 (this part was divided in two sections: as of 2018, the BelgradeâÂÂStara Pazova 34.5 km section was planned to be finished in the end of 2020 and the Stara PazovaâÂÂNovi Sad 40.4 km section in November 2021). The construction of the 107.4 km section between Novi Sad and Subotica (Hungarian border) was started on 7 April 2022 and it was due to be completed by the end of November 2024, but the opening was delayed following the train station canopy collapse in Novi Sad and ensuing countrywide protests. On 8 October 2025 the "Soko" high-speed line between Belgrade (via Novi Sad) and Subotica opened and runs with 9 departures daily. Its maximum speed is 200 km/h and the 181,6 kilometres between Belgrade and Subotica are covered in 1h19 minutes.
Only two consortia bid for the work. The winning consortium was announced June 2019. As with most public works since 2015 the government linked Hungarian entrepreneur, Là Ârinc Mészáros won, with his company âÂÂRM International ZrtâÂÂ, along with two Chinese companies: China Tiejiuju Engineering & Construction LLC., and China Railway Electrification Engineering Group(Hungary) Ltd.
Although the section between Budapest and Belgrade will allow a four-hour reduction in travel time, a further travel to the Chinese owned port of Piraeus was, as of 2017, still 2 to 4 days away by train from Belgrade.
While the Hungarian government classified its analysis of the economic viability of the project for 10 years, estimates by non-government-owned media in Hungary suggest a payoff horizon between 130 and 2400 years based on current and expected traffic on the line.
Furthermore, the project was criticized for a lack of transparency as the Hungarian government forbade the publication of the contract for the next 10 years. This has raised concerns about potential corruption of the most expensive project in the history of Hungarian railways. Additionally, the project is viewed by some independent media as a part of the Hungarian and Serbian governments' reorientation away from the EU towards China, with this large non-transparent investment potentially being a way to leverage Chinese influence in these countries.