New in town, or just here for the week? These are the plans we think work for kids who don't speak Serbian: hands-on workshops, visual shows and festivals where the action does the talking. The list updates itself as new plans come in, so check back before each weekend.
A puppet play with an unusual take on the story of Aladdin, the rascal from Baghdad, and the caliph's daughter Jasmine. The puppets are made in the style of Japanese manga cartoons and carry kids into a world of One Thousand and One Nights.
It suits kids who like fairy tales with a clear villain, where love and persistence beat even the strongest evil.
Zora and the Dream (Zora i san) is a short stage show made for babies, put on at Pinokio, Belgrade's puppet theater.
It is built for the youngest audience, so it suits parents looking for a first theater outing with a baby or young toddler.
Čudna šuma is a puppet and juggling show by writer and director Ivana Koraksić, who mixes circus, puppetry and movement.
Two mischievous boys, Miša and Bole, get lost in a forest and toss their snack wrappers. The forest dwarfs won't let them go home until they solve a series of tasks. The theme is how people treat nature, an easy way into talking about litter.
Zemunska bajka (Zemun Fairy Tale) turns Veliki trg, the main square of old Zemun, into a winter meeting place for the holiday season. This is its second edition, with a bigger and more varied program than the first.
Kids can skate on the outdoor ice rink, join children's workshops and catch music and entertainment shows. It suits families with kids of any age looking for an easy, festive drop-in outing.
Zimska Bajka (Winter Fairy Tale) is Belgrade's winter festival in Savski Park at Beograd na vodi, down by the Sava. The organizer dresses the park like a set from a holiday movie, with thousands of lights, music, food and other winter activities.
It's a come-and-go outing: wander the lights, eat something warm, and head home when the kids are done. It suits families with children of any age.
Belgrade's New Year's Fair has been a December fixture at the Belgrade Fair for decades. The heart of it is a big indoor amusement park, with carousels, little cars and other rides that pull in both small children and older kids.
Around the rides, stalls sell New Year's decorations, toys, gifts, souvenirs and holiday sweets. It suits families after a warm indoor outing with some holiday shopping on the side.
A touring ice show that tells Alice in Wonderland on skates. Alice, the Mad Hatter, the Queen of Hearts and a furry Cheshire Cat skate the story to music, joined by a giant inflatable caterpillar, an aerial hoop act and big video projections across the backdrop. It suits kids who already know the story and can sit through a full evening show.
An open-air ice rink at Kameni grad, on Ada Ciganlija, the Sava river island that holds the city's biggest beach. Skating runs in fixed sessions with short breaks between them.
Rental skates are on site, and small or wobbly skaters can hire a push-along skating aid shaped like a teddy bear to hold on to while they find their balance.
An open-air ice rink set up each winter in front of Ušće Shopping Center, ringed by wooden market stalls, music and holiday lights. Kids skate laps while the rest of the family walks the stalls.
The 2025 opening night brought drummers, a neon dance show on the ice and a children's play with skating fairy-tale characters.
Šumice is a park-forest of about 14 hectares, planted in the 1950s on Pašino Brdo, with nearly 7 km of paths under ash, oak and maple trees. The Drveni grad (Woodville) playground and exercise area sits in the middle of the larger western section, near chess tables and covered pavilions. Squirrels are the main wildlife draw, and hedgehogs turn up too.
The 11 April sports and recreation center, run by Sports Center Novi Beograd, has six pools. Indoors, the Vlaho Orlić complex has a 50 m pool, a 25 m pool and an 11 m learner pool, plus a parents' room with WiFi overlooking children's training.
In summer, three outdoor pools open: a shallow paddling pool, a school pool and an Olympic pool, with loungers and umbrellas on the deck.
A public sports center in Dorćol with three outdoor pools for summer: a 2 m deep Olympic pool, a 1.2 m recreational pool with a mushroom fountain, wall and central geysers, and a kids' pool 20 cm deep with a rubber floor. From September to June the indoor 50 m Olympic pool opens for public sessions. A small 30° pool hosts the swim school.
A ski run on the wooded slopes of Košutnjak, one of the hills where Belgrade laid out ski pistes once it became a national skiing center, and where people kept skiing after World War II. The original piste ran about 300 m down the hillside and is still easy to make out. A cafe-restaurant called Ski staza sits at the top.
The Banjica pools belong to the Voždovac sports center, with an indoor pool hall and outdoor pools in a complex shared with a stadium, sports hall and tennis courts. It is the home pool of water polo club Partizan, which runs a water polo school for kids here.
The buildings are old and the main indoor pool has been out of use; the city has announced a rebuild.
The outdoor pools at Sports Center Olimp were rebuilt as a summer swimming spot, with rows of sunbeds and room for about 2,500 swimmers. Lifeguards and an on-duty doctor are there all day, and on hot summer evenings the pools open again for night swimming.
The wider sports center also has seven tennis courts and halls for futsal and martial arts.
An open-air summer pool complex at the Sports Center Košutnjak, run by Serbia's Institute for Sport and Sports Medicine. The headline pool is the Olympic one.
The complex sits inside Košutnjak, a park-forest that belongs to the largest stretch of green right next to the built-up city.
Tašmajdan is a public swimming center with two big pools. The indoor pool has Olympic dimensions and hosts recreational swimming, a kids' swimming school and aqua fitness. The outdoor pool, open in summer, measures 50 by 20 meters, with stands for 2,000 and sun loungers and shades for hire.
The outdoor pool is 2.2 to 5 meters deep, so it suits confident swimmers.
A creative playground beside the Cvijeta Zuzorić Art Pavilion, on the eastern side of Kalemegdan Park where the fortress grounds meet the city streets. Its centerpiece is a big rope climbing net strung across a wooden frame, over soft wood-chip ground. It opened in 2015, built to European safety standards with a modern design. The Belgrade Zoo takes up the northern end of Mali Kalemegdan, a short walk away.
Savski Park is one of the biggest green spaces in the city center, about the size of four soccer fields, with more than 140 trees. Kids get a playground with modern equipment and a waterplay area built around water mechanisms they can work themselves.
Older kids can use the 700-meter two-lane jogging track, ping-pong tables and a multi-sport court for basketball, handball and small-sided soccer, plus six picnic tables.
Avala is a forested 511 m mountain on the city's southeastern edge, protected since 1859 and a long-standing picnic spot for Belgrade families. On top stands the rebuilt Avala TV Tower, with a visitor complex at its base that has sports fields, an outdoor gym and a climbing rock.
Nearby is Ivan Meštrović's Monument to the Unknown Hero, and the Sakinac hiking trail winds up through the woods.
Jevremovac is a botanical garden run by the Institute of Botany, with more than 1,300 plant species outdoors. Its centerpiece is a Victorian glass greenhouse from 1892, with rainforest plants under the dome and desert succulents in the north wing.
Outside, paths lead past a Japanese garden with stepping stones over water, a water lily pool, a bamboo maze, a children's corner and oaks more than 140 years old.
Ušće Park spreads over 52 hectares of lawns, paths and trees on the point where the Sava meets the Danube, the largest park area in the city. Kids can bike the paths, watch the skaters at the skatepark, and look across the water to Kalemegdan fortress and Great War Island.
In winter, birdwatchers come for the rare waterbirds off the banks.
Pionirski Park is a 3.6-hectare former royal garden set between the Old Palace, now the City Assembly, and the New Palace, now the President's office. The side along Kneza Miloša has the most lawn and the finest old trees, with panels naming giant specimens such as an English oak, a ginkgo and a horse chestnut. Toward Kralja Milana there is a fountain with flowerbeds.
Tašmajdan, which locals shorten to Taš, is a 9.84-hectare park on the site of a limestone quarry the Romans once worked, with Saint Mark's Church at its edge. Shaded paths lead to two children's playgrounds, a star-shaped fountain and a heart-shaped memorial to the children killed in the 1999 bombing.
The Tašmajdan Sports Center sits inside the park, with an outdoor 50-meter pool and a small children's pool beside it.
Hyde Park is a 7.3-hectare triangle of woodland on the northern slopes of Topčider Hill, between Senjak and Dedinje. A central path lined with plane trees splits it in two: a forested half with running trails, and a recreation half with an outdoor fitness area of 12 machines.
A sawdust trail of about 1,400 meters circles the edge, and a children's playground sits in the middle.
Topčider was Belgrade's first park, laid out in the 1830s in the English style with winding paths, streams and small lakes. Plane trees planted around Prince Miloš's Residence in 1831 still stand there today.
Around the residence sit fountains, a stone obelisk and the Žetelica (Woman Harvester) statue, the city's first park sculpture. Past the lawns, the paths lead on into the Topčider and Košutnjak woods.
Košutnjak is a 330-hectare forest of oak, lime and chestnut on a 250-meter hill, crossed by paths and jogging tracks. Kids can look for squirrels, hedgehogs and woodpeckers, drink from the Hajdučka česma fountain, and walk the shaded path to the iron fence marking where Prince Mihailo was killed in 1868.
The name comes from the does (košuta) that lived in the old royal hunting grounds.
Lido is a small sandy beach on the northern tip of Great War Island, the protected river island where the Sava meets the Danube. Each summer the army lays a pontoon bridge, about 345 meters long, across an arm of the Danube from the Zemun quay, and visitors walk over to the island.
On the sand there are courts for beach sports and a few restaurants.
Ada Ciganlija is a former river island on the Sava, now a 6km-long peninsula beside Lake Sava. Its man-made beaches run about 6km, hold the Blue Flag, and have lifeguards through the bathing season.
Away from the water there are playgrounds, including a natural-wood Eco Park, a hands-on Science Park with physics and astronomy exhibits, mini golf, paddle boats, and a tourist train that loops the lake.
Salaš Stremen is a Srem-style ethno farmstead with a restaurant, a horse riding club and grounds set up for family celebrations.
Younger kids can ride a pony or a horse around the grounds, and the club runs a riding school with a trainer for kids ready to learn properly. The club also hosts riding competitions, from an easy trot to fast gallops and jumps.
Avantura Park is a treetop rope course among the oldest stand of trees on Ada Ciganlija, on the car-free side of the island facing Novi Beograd. Kids clip into a harness and cross obstacles strung 4 to 8 meters up, after a safety briefing from the instructors. A loop takes about 45 minutes, the trees give thick shade in summer, and the beach is 50 meters away.
Ada Safari is an S-shaped lake of about 6 hectares near the downstream tip of Ada Ciganlija, ringed by century-old forest and a walking path. Peacocks, geese, ducks and swans live on the grounds, and herons and kingfishers turn up by the water.
The lakeside restaurant has a kids' playground with slides and big gardens. The lake itself is stocked for catch-and-release carp fishing.
Sektor44 is a bouldering gym: climbing without ropes on low walls, with protective mats to land on. Routes range from absolute-beginner problems to ones set for professional athletes, and they change regularly, so repeat visits bring new puzzles.
Kids can join coached group sessions, book a one-to-one with an instructor, or climb on their own with an adult supervising. Climbing shoes and liquid chalk are for rent at the desk.
Vanilica is the kids' play center at Vanilla, a lakeside beach bar on the Makiš side of Ada Ciganlija. The 300 m² playroom has a climbing frame, a zip line, slides, interactive toys and creative play corners.
In summer the play area spreads outdoors, with a big dinosaur slide, a climbing rock and air hockey, while parents relax at Vanilla's bar. Birthday parties are hosted here too.
Extra Dar Mar is an indoor playroom on Banovo Brdo where staff join in the play: a maze, music, crafts and group games, with a gentler space set up for toddlers under 3. A garden yard opens for outdoor play in spring and summer.
Parents can wait in the on-site café. The center also hosts birthday parties, including a kids' disco with music and light effects.
Kamp Košutnjak is a restaurant with an outdoor play area set among the trees of Košutnjak forest. The play area sits about 15 meters from the restaurant garden, so parents can eat while kids run between the inflatables and play equipment.
It also hosts kids' birthday parties, with animators and staff watching the play area, mascot hire, a cake corner and a menu built around the birthday child.
LOL Paunov Breg is a 750 m² play center inside the Paunov Breg complex at Banjica. Kids climb a three-level 3D maze, bounce in the trampoline park, ride three slides and jump in a ball pit. There is also a soft-floor court for football and basketball, a corner for the youngest, and arcade games and simulators.
A café at the front lets parents sit and watch the play.
LOL is a 2,000 m² indoor play center. A 190 m² jump arena has 25 trampolines and a foam pit, and four big slides fill the middle, one ridden on a rubber ring. There is also a laser tag arena, a rainbow net, a soft-floor court for football and basketball, and a three-level maze for toddlers. Parents can watch from the café at the front.
Turbomax is an indoor entertainment center built around electric go-karts: a short blue track and a longer red one join into a 686 m circuit. Kids 140 cm and taller drive their own kart, and smaller kids ride with an adult in a two-seat duo kart. Junior sessions on the blue track run at a lower speed. Laser tag, bowling, AR darts, billiards and a sports bar fill the rest.
A bowling alley on the second floor of the old Merkator building, with a billiards club of nine-ball tables and a café bar where adults can sit and watch the lanes.
Kids bowl with lighter kids' balls kept alongside the adult ones. Birthday parties come as a package with bowling, pizza and juice.
A 300 m² indoor laser tag arena in Mirijevo, lit with black light and laid with a rubber sports floor. Players carry laser guns, and the system tracks each player's accuracy, hits and points, then shows the results after the game. There is no physical contact and nothing is fired.
Birthday parties run two hours, with an instructor looking after the kids and pizza included.
An indoor laser tag arena run by Arena No1 in Blok 44. Players wear team vests and carry laser guns through a darkened, neon-lit play area, and the venue's main offer is laser tag birthday parties for groups of kids.
Gotivac is a 500-square-meter indoor play center with room for up to 100 kids at once and 150 seats for adults. While kids play, parents can sit down with coffee, a proper meal, protein shakes, porridge or healthy drinks from the cafe.
The space also rents out for birthday parties, with a reserved area, waiters and an entertainer included.
A 610m² pirate-themed play center on the first floor of a shopping center in Bežanijska kosa, with Pirates of the Caribbean characters painted on the walls. The kids' zone has a big ship, a three-level jungle maze, slides, trampolines, ball pits for the youngest, electric toys and a small football and basketball court.
Parents get a separate cafe room to sit in while the kids play.
An indoor playroom with slides, a ball pit and a games room, plus a separate lounge where parents can order coffee while kids play.
On party days staff decorate the space to the child's theme and run games, face painting, soap bubbles, small science experiments and magic acts. Other days it opens as a drop-in playroom with creative workshops.
Maštograd is a play center on Bežanijska Kosa with 800 m² of space, half indoors and half in an outdoor yard. Inside are a 3D maze, a treehouse with a hanging bridge, a car track, themed rooms, a chill-out room with a cinema and a sports hall. The yard has swings, slides, a trampoline, a zip line and a sandpit, plus a garden café for parents.
Tibidabo is a playroom and party venue in Block 28, next to Belgrade Arena. The play area has climbing equipment, a ball pit and toys, with staff animators keeping watch and running games.
Parents sit in a separate café that looks into the playroom, and there is a garden plus a PlayStation room for older siblings. Creative workshops run from time to time.
A trampoline park and soft-play center inside Ava Shopping Park, next to IKEA. The jumping zone has 50 linked trampolines, a 20-element ninja course, auto-belay climbing walls, a rope course, a zip line, a foam pit and an airbag jump.
The playroom is for younger kids: three levels of soft play, 12 slides, a foam-ball blaster arena and a soft corner for crawlers. A café overlooks the trampolines.
Cosmo Kids is an indoor playground for babies, toddlers and preschoolers inside the Galerija shopping mall. Kids work through a play maze, ride the double, Vulkano and donut slides, bounce on trampolines and dig in a sandbox, while a separate baby corner gives crawlers a calmer space of their own.
Cosmo Play is an indoor play center inside the Galerija shopping mall. Kids climb and crawl through a multi-level maze, race down slides and steel Inox slides, and play team games in a laser tag arena. A separate baby corner gives the youngest their own space.
Parents can wait in the Cosmo Caffe, and the grip socks some attractions require are sold at the front desk.
An indoor trampoline park inside the Galerija shopping center, set up as a run of sports challenges. Kids tackle a Ninja Warrior obstacle course, dunk on trampoline basketball hoops, face off on a balance beam, try the long jump trampoline and play in a dodgeball arena.
Jumpers must be over 130cm tall, so it suits school-age kids and teens more than toddlers. Parents can wait in the Cosmo Caffe.
Pionir Ice Hall opened in 1978 and is the city's largest indoor ice rink, built to international standards for hockey and figure skating competitions. Between matches and shows, the rink runs public skating sessions through the cold months.
The SC Tasmajdan skating school teaches beginners to balance, stop and turn safely in 45-minute group lessons, a good base for figure skating or hockey later.
A city-run arts center for children, founded in 1952 as the Dom pionira and at Takovska 8 since 1968. Inside are studios for painting, comics, printmaking and animation, rooms for ballet, singing and acting, a children's choir, and a stage for kids' and teen shows.
Most programs are workshops kids sign up for, and one theater workshop runs in English. The center also organizes the Radost Evrope children's festival.
Cineplexx Ušće is the 11-screen multiplex inside Ušće Shopping Center. The mall around it also has a bowling alley, about 150 shops, restaurants and cafés, and two levels of underground parking, so a film can turn into lunch or a round of bowling without leaving the building.
A guided sightseeing cruise on the Sava and the Danube, boarding at Beton Hala below the old town. The boat passes Kalemegdan Fortress and Nebojša Tower, heads out to the confluence with views of Great War Island and Zemun, then runs upriver past Belgrade Waterfront and under the Branko, Gazela and Ada bridges.
Guides on the daytime cruise speak English. The club also runs sunset and dinner cruises.
Zemunski kej is a riverside promenade that runs for kilometers along the Danube. Along the way are cafés on moored barges, restaurants, an amusement park and the former Hotel Jugoslavija, once the city's largest hotel. Kej Oslobođenja park sits on the quay itself.
In summer, a seasonal pontoon bridge links Zemun to Great War Island, and the Leto na Keju festival holds events by the river.
A hands-on aquarium and reptile house run by the Aquaria Life association. Tanks hold fish from the Sava and Danube, the Adriatic and tropical coral reefs, plus 50 koi carp in a 6-meter tank. The reptile corner has snakes, leopard geckos, iguanas, tarantulas and scorpions, and staff can arrange time with some of the animals. Outside, a garden keeps red-eared turtles, koi and bonsai trees.
Gardoš Tower is a 36-meter brick and stone lookout built in 1896, standing inside the ruins of the medieval Zemun Fortress on Gardoš hill. Inside, vertical staircases climb past an art gallery to a balcony viewpoint over the red roofs of Zemun and the Danube.
Kids can explore the crumbling fortress corner towers around the base, and locals still call it the Tower of John Hunyadi.
An outdoor park of life-size dinosaur models in Mali Kalemegdan, next to the Belgrade Fortress. Kids walk the paths between the models, then let off steam at the on-site playground.
An open-air cafe serves drinks for parents, and a souvenir shop sells toys and keepsakes. The park also hosts birthday parties, with food, drinks, decoration and music organized by the team.
A 204-meter TV tower on Avala mountain, rebuilt after NATO bombing destroyed the original in 1999. Two fast lifts climb to a circular viewing deck at 122 meters, with four binoculars and views stretching from Šumadija to Vršac.
At the foot, in pine forest, kids get a playground, the Elf Village (six treehouses linked by hanging bridges), a 7.5-meter climbing wall with instructors, and two sports courts.
Belgrade Fortress sits on a ridge where the Sava meets the Danube, with Kalemegdan Park wrapped around its walls. Kids can walk the ramparts and old gates, find the Victor monument and the fortress cannon, and go down into the Roman Well, a military bunker or the Nebojša Tower.
The park side has two open playgrounds, a Dino park and the Belgrade Zoo, plus basketball and tennis courts.
Belgrade Zoo fills about 7 hectares inside Kalemegdan Fortress park and keeps around 200 species. Kids look for the white lions and white tigers, watch the penguins in their 2019 enclosure, and find Muja, an American alligator that has lived here since 1937.
A petting zoo has alpacas, rabbits and pygmy goats, and two cafés and ice cream stands sit inside the grounds.
While its permanent exhibition is being prepared, the museum shows a selection from its 50,000 objects. On show are King Peter I's coronation globe, scepter, cloak and crown, the only preserved Serbian crown, cast from the iron of a cannon from Karađorđe's uprising. Five reconstructed crowns of medieval rulers, Emperor Dušan's among them, are shown for the first time. It suits school-age kids curious about kings and crowns.
The museum sits in a white-marble building shaped like a cluster of six cut cubes, facing Belgrade Fortress across the Sava. Inside there are no corridors: five exhibition levels flow into each other, so kids can look down on the art below from the upper floors. The collection covers 20th-century Yugoslav, Serbian and international art, and a sculpture park surrounds the building.
Palata nauke is a hands-on science center with over 30 exhibits in four zones: Human, Earth, Technology and Universe. Kids can try VR and AR, see robots at work, and look at a spacesuit.
Europe's largest interactive globe, 3 meters across, shows over 500 projections of Earth and other planets from NASA data. A 36-seat dome planetarium screens 360° films, and the fifth floor has a STEAM area for preschoolers.
The first and only museum in the region given over entirely to the arts of Africa. The permanent display shows masks, wood and bronze sculpture, goldweights, musical instruments and textiles from West African peoples such as the Dogon, Bambara and Ashanti, grouped by region with photographs and labels in English and Serbian.
Temporary exhibitions cover other parts of the continent, from Ethiopia and the Maghreb to South Africa.
Belgrade's largest and oldest museum, founded in 1844, fills three floors and 5,000 square meters with a permanent collection running from the Paleolithic to 20th-century art.
Kids can look for prehistoric sculptures from Vinča and Lepenski Vir, some over 8,000 years old, then hunt down paintings by Renoir, Monet and Van Gogh. Its treasures include the Miroslav Gospels, an illustrated manuscript from 1186.
The Military Museum sits on a bastion of the Belgrade Fortress at Kalemegdan. Inside, more than 3,000 objects fill 52 rooms: weapons, uniforms, flags and medals tracing Serbian military history from the medieval states to the wars of the 1990s.
Outside, cannons, tanks and armored vehicles from Germany, Italy, Russia, the USA and more stand around the building, including the only surviving Polish TK-3 tankette.
The Museum of Yugoslavia is three buildings, the May 25 Museum, the Old Museum and the House of Flowers, joined by a sculpture park in leafy Dedinje. The May 25 Museum opened in 1962 as a birthday gift to Josip Broz Tito, who is buried in the House of Flowers.
Exhibitions trace life in Yugoslavia through the museum's collection, and the permanent exhibition has a creative corner for kids.
A hands-on illusion museum on three levels, where most exhibits are meant to be touched and photographed. Kids walk the spinning Vortex Tunnel, shrink and grow in the Ames room, pose in an upside-down room and play poker with five of their own clones.
Inside the exhibition, a puzzle playroom has wooden Dilemma games for kids to work through between rooms.
The Aeronautical Museum keeps the aviation heritage of Serbia and Yugoslavia in a glass-domed building at Nikola Tesla Airport, opened in 1989 and now a protected cultural monument.
Its collections hold over 200 aircraft. Planes stand on two levels under the dome, with more in an open-air display outside, among them a Spitfire, a Hurricane, a Messerschmitt Me 109 and a P-47 Thunderbolt.
The museum fills the 1928 building of Serbia's first public power station, in Dorćol. On the ground floor, a science playroom lets kids feel centrifugal force, test their balance and puzzle over optical illusions, and a toy gallery shows over 150 toys from 1920 to 1970 at kid height.
The Aleksandar Despić gallery holds 400-plus objects, from steamships and old printing to the first Serbian-made computers and Tesla's induction motor.
New in town, or just here for the week? These are the plans we think work for kids who don't speak Serbian: hands-on workshops, visual shows and festivals where the action does the talking. The list updates itself as new plans come in, so check back before each weekend.
A puppet play with an unusual take on the story of Aladdin, the rascal from Baghdad, and the caliph's daughter Jasmine. The puppets are made in the style of Japanese manga cartoons and carry kids into a world of One Thousand and One Nights.
It suits kids who like fairy tales with a clear villain, where love and persistence beat even the strongest evil.
Zora and the Dream (Zora i san) is a short stage show made for babies, put on at Pinokio, Belgrade's puppet theater.
It is built for the youngest audience, so it suits parents looking for a first theater outing with a baby or young toddler.
Čudna šuma is a puppet and juggling show by writer and director Ivana Koraksić, who mixes circus, puppetry and movement.
Two mischievous boys, Miša and Bole, get lost in a forest and toss their snack wrappers. The forest dwarfs won't let them go home until they solve a series of tasks. The theme is how people treat nature, an easy way into talking about litter.
Zemunska bajka (Zemun Fairy Tale) turns Veliki trg, the main square of old Zemun, into a winter meeting place for the holiday season. This is its second edition, with a bigger and more varied program than the first.
Kids can skate on the outdoor ice rink, join children's workshops and catch music and entertainment shows. It suits families with kids of any age looking for an easy, festive drop-in outing.
Zimska Bajka (Winter Fairy Tale) is Belgrade's winter festival in Savski Park at Beograd na vodi, down by the Sava. The organizer dresses the park like a set from a holiday movie, with thousands of lights, music, food and other winter activities.
It's a come-and-go outing: wander the lights, eat something warm, and head home when the kids are done. It suits families with children of any age.
Belgrade's New Year's Fair has been a December fixture at the Belgrade Fair for decades. The heart of it is a big indoor amusement park, with carousels, little cars and other rides that pull in both small children and older kids.
Around the rides, stalls sell New Year's decorations, toys, gifts, souvenirs and holiday sweets. It suits families after a warm indoor outing with some holiday shopping on the side.
A touring ice show that tells Alice in Wonderland on skates. Alice, the Mad Hatter, the Queen of Hearts and a furry Cheshire Cat skate the story to music, joined by a giant inflatable caterpillar, an aerial hoop act and big video projections across the backdrop. It suits kids who already know the story and can sit through a full evening show.
An open-air ice rink at Kameni grad, on Ada Ciganlija, the Sava river island that holds the city's biggest beach. Skating runs in fixed sessions with short breaks between them.
Rental skates are on site, and small or wobbly skaters can hire a push-along skating aid shaped like a teddy bear to hold on to while they find their balance.
An open-air ice rink set up each winter in front of Ušće Shopping Center, ringed by wooden market stalls, music and holiday lights. Kids skate laps while the rest of the family walks the stalls.
The 2025 opening night brought drummers, a neon dance show on the ice and a children's play with skating fairy-tale characters.
Šumice is a park-forest of about 14 hectares, planted in the 1950s on Pašino Brdo, with nearly 7 km of paths under ash, oak and maple trees. The Drveni grad (Woodville) playground and exercise area sits in the middle of the larger western section, near chess tables and covered pavilions. Squirrels are the main wildlife draw, and hedgehogs turn up too.
The 11 April sports and recreation center, run by Sports Center Novi Beograd, has six pools. Indoors, the Vlaho Orlić complex has a 50 m pool, a 25 m pool and an 11 m learner pool, plus a parents' room with WiFi overlooking children's training.
In summer, three outdoor pools open: a shallow paddling pool, a school pool and an Olympic pool, with loungers and umbrellas on the deck.
A public sports center in Dorćol with three outdoor pools for summer: a 2 m deep Olympic pool, a 1.2 m recreational pool with a mushroom fountain, wall and central geysers, and a kids' pool 20 cm deep with a rubber floor. From September to June the indoor 50 m Olympic pool opens for public sessions. A small 30° pool hosts the swim school.
A ski run on the wooded slopes of Košutnjak, one of the hills where Belgrade laid out ski pistes once it became a national skiing center, and where people kept skiing after World War II. The original piste ran about 300 m down the hillside and is still easy to make out. A cafe-restaurant called Ski staza sits at the top.
The Banjica pools belong to the Voždovac sports center, with an indoor pool hall and outdoor pools in a complex shared with a stadium, sports hall and tennis courts. It is the home pool of water polo club Partizan, which runs a water polo school for kids here.
The buildings are old and the main indoor pool has been out of use; the city has announced a rebuild.
The outdoor pools at Sports Center Olimp were rebuilt as a summer swimming spot, with rows of sunbeds and room for about 2,500 swimmers. Lifeguards and an on-duty doctor are there all day, and on hot summer evenings the pools open again for night swimming.
The wider sports center also has seven tennis courts and halls for futsal and martial arts.
An open-air summer pool complex at the Sports Center Košutnjak, run by Serbia's Institute for Sport and Sports Medicine. The headline pool is the Olympic one.
The complex sits inside Košutnjak, a park-forest that belongs to the largest stretch of green right next to the built-up city.
Tašmajdan is a public swimming center with two big pools. The indoor pool has Olympic dimensions and hosts recreational swimming, a kids' swimming school and aqua fitness. The outdoor pool, open in summer, measures 50 by 20 meters, with stands for 2,000 and sun loungers and shades for hire.
The outdoor pool is 2.2 to 5 meters deep, so it suits confident swimmers.
A creative playground beside the Cvijeta Zuzorić Art Pavilion, on the eastern side of Kalemegdan Park where the fortress grounds meet the city streets. Its centerpiece is a big rope climbing net strung across a wooden frame, over soft wood-chip ground. It opened in 2015, built to European safety standards with a modern design. The Belgrade Zoo takes up the northern end of Mali Kalemegdan, a short walk away.
Savski Park is one of the biggest green spaces in the city center, about the size of four soccer fields, with more than 140 trees. Kids get a playground with modern equipment and a waterplay area built around water mechanisms they can work themselves.
Older kids can use the 700-meter two-lane jogging track, ping-pong tables and a multi-sport court for basketball, handball and small-sided soccer, plus six picnic tables.
Avala is a forested 511 m mountain on the city's southeastern edge, protected since 1859 and a long-standing picnic spot for Belgrade families. On top stands the rebuilt Avala TV Tower, with a visitor complex at its base that has sports fields, an outdoor gym and a climbing rock.
Nearby is Ivan Meštrović's Monument to the Unknown Hero, and the Sakinac hiking trail winds up through the woods.
Jevremovac is a botanical garden run by the Institute of Botany, with more than 1,300 plant species outdoors. Its centerpiece is a Victorian glass greenhouse from 1892, with rainforest plants under the dome and desert succulents in the north wing.
Outside, paths lead past a Japanese garden with stepping stones over water, a water lily pool, a bamboo maze, a children's corner and oaks more than 140 years old.
Ušće Park spreads over 52 hectares of lawns, paths and trees on the point where the Sava meets the Danube, the largest park area in the city. Kids can bike the paths, watch the skaters at the skatepark, and look across the water to Kalemegdan fortress and Great War Island.
In winter, birdwatchers come for the rare waterbirds off the banks.
Pionirski Park is a 3.6-hectare former royal garden set between the Old Palace, now the City Assembly, and the New Palace, now the President's office. The side along Kneza Miloša has the most lawn and the finest old trees, with panels naming giant specimens such as an English oak, a ginkgo and a horse chestnut. Toward Kralja Milana there is a fountain with flowerbeds.
Tašmajdan, which locals shorten to Taš, is a 9.84-hectare park on the site of a limestone quarry the Romans once worked, with Saint Mark's Church at its edge. Shaded paths lead to two children's playgrounds, a star-shaped fountain and a heart-shaped memorial to the children killed in the 1999 bombing.
The Tašmajdan Sports Center sits inside the park, with an outdoor 50-meter pool and a small children's pool beside it.
Hyde Park is a 7.3-hectare triangle of woodland on the northern slopes of Topčider Hill, between Senjak and Dedinje. A central path lined with plane trees splits it in two: a forested half with running trails, and a recreation half with an outdoor fitness area of 12 machines.
A sawdust trail of about 1,400 meters circles the edge, and a children's playground sits in the middle.
Topčider was Belgrade's first park, laid out in the 1830s in the English style with winding paths, streams and small lakes. Plane trees planted around Prince Miloš's Residence in 1831 still stand there today.
Around the residence sit fountains, a stone obelisk and the Žetelica (Woman Harvester) statue, the city's first park sculpture. Past the lawns, the paths lead on into the Topčider and Košutnjak woods.
Košutnjak is a 330-hectare forest of oak, lime and chestnut on a 250-meter hill, crossed by paths and jogging tracks. Kids can look for squirrels, hedgehogs and woodpeckers, drink from the Hajdučka česma fountain, and walk the shaded path to the iron fence marking where Prince Mihailo was killed in 1868.
The name comes from the does (košuta) that lived in the old royal hunting grounds.
Lido is a small sandy beach on the northern tip of Great War Island, the protected river island where the Sava meets the Danube. Each summer the army lays a pontoon bridge, about 345 meters long, across an arm of the Danube from the Zemun quay, and visitors walk over to the island.
On the sand there are courts for beach sports and a few restaurants.
Ada Ciganlija is a former river island on the Sava, now a 6km-long peninsula beside Lake Sava. Its man-made beaches run about 6km, hold the Blue Flag, and have lifeguards through the bathing season.
Away from the water there are playgrounds, including a natural-wood Eco Park, a hands-on Science Park with physics and astronomy exhibits, mini golf, paddle boats, and a tourist train that loops the lake.
Salaš Stremen is a Srem-style ethno farmstead with a restaurant, a horse riding club and grounds set up for family celebrations.
Younger kids can ride a pony or a horse around the grounds, and the club runs a riding school with a trainer for kids ready to learn properly. The club also hosts riding competitions, from an easy trot to fast gallops and jumps.
Avantura Park is a treetop rope course among the oldest stand of trees on Ada Ciganlija, on the car-free side of the island facing Novi Beograd. Kids clip into a harness and cross obstacles strung 4 to 8 meters up, after a safety briefing from the instructors. A loop takes about 45 minutes, the trees give thick shade in summer, and the beach is 50 meters away.
Ada Safari is an S-shaped lake of about 6 hectares near the downstream tip of Ada Ciganlija, ringed by century-old forest and a walking path. Peacocks, geese, ducks and swans live on the grounds, and herons and kingfishers turn up by the water.
The lakeside restaurant has a kids' playground with slides and big gardens. The lake itself is stocked for catch-and-release carp fishing.
Sektor44 is a bouldering gym: climbing without ropes on low walls, with protective mats to land on. Routes range from absolute-beginner problems to ones set for professional athletes, and they change regularly, so repeat visits bring new puzzles.
Kids can join coached group sessions, book a one-to-one with an instructor, or climb on their own with an adult supervising. Climbing shoes and liquid chalk are for rent at the desk.
Vanilica is the kids' play center at Vanilla, a lakeside beach bar on the Makiš side of Ada Ciganlija. The 300 m² playroom has a climbing frame, a zip line, slides, interactive toys and creative play corners.
In summer the play area spreads outdoors, with a big dinosaur slide, a climbing rock and air hockey, while parents relax at Vanilla's bar. Birthday parties are hosted here too.
Extra Dar Mar is an indoor playroom on Banovo Brdo where staff join in the play: a maze, music, crafts and group games, with a gentler space set up for toddlers under 3. A garden yard opens for outdoor play in spring and summer.
Parents can wait in the on-site café. The center also hosts birthday parties, including a kids' disco with music and light effects.
Kamp Košutnjak is a restaurant with an outdoor play area set among the trees of Košutnjak forest. The play area sits about 15 meters from the restaurant garden, so parents can eat while kids run between the inflatables and play equipment.
It also hosts kids' birthday parties, with animators and staff watching the play area, mascot hire, a cake corner and a menu built around the birthday child.
LOL Paunov Breg is a 750 m² play center inside the Paunov Breg complex at Banjica. Kids climb a three-level 3D maze, bounce in the trampoline park, ride three slides and jump in a ball pit. There is also a soft-floor court for football and basketball, a corner for the youngest, and arcade games and simulators.
A café at the front lets parents sit and watch the play.
LOL is a 2,000 m² indoor play center. A 190 m² jump arena has 25 trampolines and a foam pit, and four big slides fill the middle, one ridden on a rubber ring. There is also a laser tag arena, a rainbow net, a soft-floor court for football and basketball, and a three-level maze for toddlers. Parents can watch from the café at the front.
Turbomax is an indoor entertainment center built around electric go-karts: a short blue track and a longer red one join into a 686 m circuit. Kids 140 cm and taller drive their own kart, and smaller kids ride with an adult in a two-seat duo kart. Junior sessions on the blue track run at a lower speed. Laser tag, bowling, AR darts, billiards and a sports bar fill the rest.
A bowling alley on the second floor of the old Merkator building, with a billiards club of nine-ball tables and a café bar where adults can sit and watch the lanes.
Kids bowl with lighter kids' balls kept alongside the adult ones. Birthday parties come as a package with bowling, pizza and juice.
A 300 m² indoor laser tag arena in Mirijevo, lit with black light and laid with a rubber sports floor. Players carry laser guns, and the system tracks each player's accuracy, hits and points, then shows the results after the game. There is no physical contact and nothing is fired.
Birthday parties run two hours, with an instructor looking after the kids and pizza included.
An indoor laser tag arena run by Arena No1 in Blok 44. Players wear team vests and carry laser guns through a darkened, neon-lit play area, and the venue's main offer is laser tag birthday parties for groups of kids.
Gotivac is a 500-square-meter indoor play center with room for up to 100 kids at once and 150 seats for adults. While kids play, parents can sit down with coffee, a proper meal, protein shakes, porridge or healthy drinks from the cafe.
The space also rents out for birthday parties, with a reserved area, waiters and an entertainer included.
A 610m² pirate-themed play center on the first floor of a shopping center in Bežanijska kosa, with Pirates of the Caribbean characters painted on the walls. The kids' zone has a big ship, a three-level jungle maze, slides, trampolines, ball pits for the youngest, electric toys and a small football and basketball court.
Parents get a separate cafe room to sit in while the kids play.
An indoor playroom with slides, a ball pit and a games room, plus a separate lounge where parents can order coffee while kids play.
On party days staff decorate the space to the child's theme and run games, face painting, soap bubbles, small science experiments and magic acts. Other days it opens as a drop-in playroom with creative workshops.
Maštograd is a play center on Bežanijska Kosa with 800 m² of space, half indoors and half in an outdoor yard. Inside are a 3D maze, a treehouse with a hanging bridge, a car track, themed rooms, a chill-out room with a cinema and a sports hall. The yard has swings, slides, a trampoline, a zip line and a sandpit, plus a garden café for parents.
Tibidabo is a playroom and party venue in Block 28, next to Belgrade Arena. The play area has climbing equipment, a ball pit and toys, with staff animators keeping watch and running games.
Parents sit in a separate café that looks into the playroom, and there is a garden plus a PlayStation room for older siblings. Creative workshops run from time to time.
A trampoline park and soft-play center inside Ava Shopping Park, next to IKEA. The jumping zone has 50 linked trampolines, a 20-element ninja course, auto-belay climbing walls, a rope course, a zip line, a foam pit and an airbag jump.
The playroom is for younger kids: three levels of soft play, 12 slides, a foam-ball blaster arena and a soft corner for crawlers. A café overlooks the trampolines.
Cosmo Kids is an indoor playground for babies, toddlers and preschoolers inside the Galerija shopping mall. Kids work through a play maze, ride the double, Vulkano and donut slides, bounce on trampolines and dig in a sandbox, while a separate baby corner gives crawlers a calmer space of their own.
Cosmo Play is an indoor play center inside the Galerija shopping mall. Kids climb and crawl through a multi-level maze, race down slides and steel Inox slides, and play team games in a laser tag arena. A separate baby corner gives the youngest their own space.
Parents can wait in the Cosmo Caffe, and the grip socks some attractions require are sold at the front desk.
An indoor trampoline park inside the Galerija shopping center, set up as a run of sports challenges. Kids tackle a Ninja Warrior obstacle course, dunk on trampoline basketball hoops, face off on a balance beam, try the long jump trampoline and play in a dodgeball arena.
Jumpers must be over 130cm tall, so it suits school-age kids and teens more than toddlers. Parents can wait in the Cosmo Caffe.
Pionir Ice Hall opened in 1978 and is the city's largest indoor ice rink, built to international standards for hockey and figure skating competitions. Between matches and shows, the rink runs public skating sessions through the cold months.
The SC Tasmajdan skating school teaches beginners to balance, stop and turn safely in 45-minute group lessons, a good base for figure skating or hockey later.
A city-run arts center for children, founded in 1952 as the Dom pionira and at Takovska 8 since 1968. Inside are studios for painting, comics, printmaking and animation, rooms for ballet, singing and acting, a children's choir, and a stage for kids' and teen shows.
Most programs are workshops kids sign up for, and one theater workshop runs in English. The center also organizes the Radost Evrope children's festival.
Cineplexx Ušće is the 11-screen multiplex inside Ušće Shopping Center. The mall around it also has a bowling alley, about 150 shops, restaurants and cafés, and two levels of underground parking, so a film can turn into lunch or a round of bowling without leaving the building.
A guided sightseeing cruise on the Sava and the Danube, boarding at Beton Hala below the old town. The boat passes Kalemegdan Fortress and Nebojša Tower, heads out to the confluence with views of Great War Island and Zemun, then runs upriver past Belgrade Waterfront and under the Branko, Gazela and Ada bridges.
Guides on the daytime cruise speak English. The club also runs sunset and dinner cruises.
Zemunski kej is a riverside promenade that runs for kilometers along the Danube. Along the way are cafés on moored barges, restaurants, an amusement park and the former Hotel Jugoslavija, once the city's largest hotel. Kej Oslobođenja park sits on the quay itself.
In summer, a seasonal pontoon bridge links Zemun to Great War Island, and the Leto na Keju festival holds events by the river.
A hands-on aquarium and reptile house run by the Aquaria Life association. Tanks hold fish from the Sava and Danube, the Adriatic and tropical coral reefs, plus 50 koi carp in a 6-meter tank. The reptile corner has snakes, leopard geckos, iguanas, tarantulas and scorpions, and staff can arrange time with some of the animals. Outside, a garden keeps red-eared turtles, koi and bonsai trees.
Gardoš Tower is a 36-meter brick and stone lookout built in 1896, standing inside the ruins of the medieval Zemun Fortress on Gardoš hill. Inside, vertical staircases climb past an art gallery to a balcony viewpoint over the red roofs of Zemun and the Danube.
Kids can explore the crumbling fortress corner towers around the base, and locals still call it the Tower of John Hunyadi.
An outdoor park of life-size dinosaur models in Mali Kalemegdan, next to the Belgrade Fortress. Kids walk the paths between the models, then let off steam at the on-site playground.
An open-air cafe serves drinks for parents, and a souvenir shop sells toys and keepsakes. The park also hosts birthday parties, with food, drinks, decoration and music organized by the team.
A 204-meter TV tower on Avala mountain, rebuilt after NATO bombing destroyed the original in 1999. Two fast lifts climb to a circular viewing deck at 122 meters, with four binoculars and views stretching from Šumadija to Vršac.
At the foot, in pine forest, kids get a playground, the Elf Village (six treehouses linked by hanging bridges), a 7.5-meter climbing wall with instructors, and two sports courts.
Belgrade Fortress sits on a ridge where the Sava meets the Danube, with Kalemegdan Park wrapped around its walls. Kids can walk the ramparts and old gates, find the Victor monument and the fortress cannon, and go down into the Roman Well, a military bunker or the Nebojša Tower.
The park side has two open playgrounds, a Dino park and the Belgrade Zoo, plus basketball and tennis courts.
Belgrade Zoo fills about 7 hectares inside Kalemegdan Fortress park and keeps around 200 species. Kids look for the white lions and white tigers, watch the penguins in their 2019 enclosure, and find Muja, an American alligator that has lived here since 1937.
A petting zoo has alpacas, rabbits and pygmy goats, and two cafés and ice cream stands sit inside the grounds.
While its permanent exhibition is being prepared, the museum shows a selection from its 50,000 objects. On show are King Peter I's coronation globe, scepter, cloak and crown, the only preserved Serbian crown, cast from the iron of a cannon from Karađorđe's uprising. Five reconstructed crowns of medieval rulers, Emperor Dušan's among them, are shown for the first time. It suits school-age kids curious about kings and crowns.
The museum sits in a white-marble building shaped like a cluster of six cut cubes, facing Belgrade Fortress across the Sava. Inside there are no corridors: five exhibition levels flow into each other, so kids can look down on the art below from the upper floors. The collection covers 20th-century Yugoslav, Serbian and international art, and a sculpture park surrounds the building.
Palata nauke is a hands-on science center with over 30 exhibits in four zones: Human, Earth, Technology and Universe. Kids can try VR and AR, see robots at work, and look at a spacesuit.
Europe's largest interactive globe, 3 meters across, shows over 500 projections of Earth and other planets from NASA data. A 36-seat dome planetarium screens 360° films, and the fifth floor has a STEAM area for preschoolers.
The first and only museum in the region given over entirely to the arts of Africa. The permanent display shows masks, wood and bronze sculpture, goldweights, musical instruments and textiles from West African peoples such as the Dogon, Bambara and Ashanti, grouped by region with photographs and labels in English and Serbian.
Temporary exhibitions cover other parts of the continent, from Ethiopia and the Maghreb to South Africa.
Belgrade's largest and oldest museum, founded in 1844, fills three floors and 5,000 square meters with a permanent collection running from the Paleolithic to 20th-century art.
Kids can look for prehistoric sculptures from Vinča and Lepenski Vir, some over 8,000 years old, then hunt down paintings by Renoir, Monet and Van Gogh. Its treasures include the Miroslav Gospels, an illustrated manuscript from 1186.
The Military Museum sits on a bastion of the Belgrade Fortress at Kalemegdan. Inside, more than 3,000 objects fill 52 rooms: weapons, uniforms, flags and medals tracing Serbian military history from the medieval states to the wars of the 1990s.
Outside, cannons, tanks and armored vehicles from Germany, Italy, Russia, the USA and more stand around the building, including the only surviving Polish TK-3 tankette.
The Museum of Yugoslavia is three buildings, the May 25 Museum, the Old Museum and the House of Flowers, joined by a sculpture park in leafy Dedinje. The May 25 Museum opened in 1962 as a birthday gift to Josip Broz Tito, who is buried in the House of Flowers.
Exhibitions trace life in Yugoslavia through the museum's collection, and the permanent exhibition has a creative corner for kids.
A hands-on illusion museum on three levels, where most exhibits are meant to be touched and photographed. Kids walk the spinning Vortex Tunnel, shrink and grow in the Ames room, pose in an upside-down room and play poker with five of their own clones.
Inside the exhibition, a puzzle playroom has wooden Dilemma games for kids to work through between rooms.
The Aeronautical Museum keeps the aviation heritage of Serbia and Yugoslavia in a glass-domed building at Nikola Tesla Airport, opened in 1989 and now a protected cultural monument.
Its collections hold over 200 aircraft. Planes stand on two levels under the dome, with more in an open-air display outside, among them a Spitfire, a Hurricane, a Messerschmitt Me 109 and a P-47 Thunderbolt.
The museum fills the 1928 building of Serbia's first public power station, in Dorćol. On the ground floor, a science playroom lets kids feel centrifugal force, test their balance and puzzle over optical illusions, and a toy gallery shows over 150 toys from 1920 to 1970 at kid height.
The Aleksandar Despić gallery holds 400-plus objects, from steamships and old printing to the first Serbian-made computers and Tesla's induction motor.
