When Expo 2027 opens in Belgrade on 15 May, more than 130 countries will have fitted their pavilions, exhibits and equipment onto 25 hectares in Surčin, on the city's western edge.
That is already more than came to Astana in 2017, the last specialised exposition, which drew 115 countries to a site of the same size. The organisers expect at least four million visitors over 93 days and some 8,000 events, all under the theme "Play for Humanity: Sport and Music for All".
The organisers put the site and the infrastructure around it, which includes an aquatic centre, a river dock, new roads and a rail link from Zemun through the airport, at 1.29 billion euros. A study by the consultancy Louis Berger Adria, which the organisers published in August, expects the project to add €9.07bn in gross value to the Serbian economy by 2037. Sixty per cent of that is meant to come after the Expo closes, once the grounds have become a permanent fairground, a museum and 1,500 flats.
Branimir Jovanović, an economist at the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (wiiw), sees two kinds of return from an event this size. "The first is stronger economic growth in the short term, while the investments are carried out and the exhibition is held, through higher state spending and more tourists," he told Forbes Srbija in May. "The second is better infrastructure, and with it higher growth in the longer term, because roads are built, public transport improves and new facilities go up."
Whether Serbia collects on both, he said, will depend on how the event is run and whether the public is behind it.
Before any of that, the pavilion units have to be handed to participants, which under the timetable agreed with the Bureau International des Expositions happens by December. Then the freight starts moving in earnest.
The logistics partner
In September the organisers named Intereuropa, based in Dobanovci in the same municipality as the site, as the Expo's official logistics partner. Its contract runs from October 2026 to December 2027. It covers every vehicle, consignment and piece of equipment going into the site, coming out of it or moving between its zones, together with customs representation, warehousing and cold storage at between 0 and 8°C.
The hardest months are the ones between the handover and the opening. Dozens of countries will be shipping exhibits onto a site that is still being finished, each with its own timetable and its own customs paperwork, and each needing its load at a particular spot inside a narrow window. Intereuropa says everything depends on planning the flows early, running them on shared information systems and adjusting them to whatever is happening on site that day.
After 15 August the same work runs backwards, as the exhibits go home and the modular pavilions are taken apart for reuse in schools and sports facilities across Serbia.
"Expo 2027 is where all the core capabilities of modern logistics meet in practice."
Samo Kastelic, member of the management board of Intereuropa
"Expo 2027 is where all the core capabilities of modern logistics meet in practice," said Samo Kastelic, a member of Intereuropa's management board. "What gives the project its particular value is that we will combine our company's know-how in Serbia with the expertise and capacity of the whole Intereuropa Group."
The group operates in nine countries from around 70 locations, and people from its other companies will join the Serbian team as the work requires. It has handled trade fairs across the region for decades, but those were one-off jobs. This one lasts 15 months.
Intereuropa was founded in Koper on 12 February 1947, in what was then Zone B of the Free Territory of Trieste, with three employees and an old tractor. It will spend its 80th year moving the world's exhibits into Belgrade.