Best of Montenegro 2025: A Year in Retrospect

Taking stock of a year

2025 was a pivotal year for Montenegro’s tourism, and I mean that in the literal sense rather than the PR sense: things genuinely shifted, in both directions, in ways that will shape how the country develops through the rest of the decade.

Visitor numbers exceeded three million for the first time. New flight routes from the UK and Germany made the country accessible to markets that previously treated it as a specialist destination. The Bar-Boljare motorway’s completed coastal segment changed travel times measurably. Aman Sveti Stefan reopened its full inventory. And alongside all of this, the Kotor old town reached a density in late July that provoked a genuine policy discussion about visitor limits.

Here’s what actually mattered, from a traveller’s perspective.

The experience of the year: Skadar Lake by boat at dawn

I’ll start with the thing that surprised me most, because the Skadar Lake boat experience has been available for years and I kept deprioritising it in favour of the more immediately dramatic options — the canyon, the coast, the fortresses.

Going in September, departing from Virpazar at first light before the tour boats arrive, changed my understanding of what Montenegro can offer. The pelicans in the morning mist. The Dalmatian pelican — an endangered species globally — in concentrations I hadn’t seen outside documentary footage. The floating water lilies in the southern bays. The monastery of Kom emerging from the shoreline vegetation as the boat rounded a bend.

Book a guided boat tour on Skadar Lake

This is the most underrated experience in Montenegro, full stop. It has nothing to do with the Adriatic coast and everything to do with the ecological and historical depth of the country’s interior.

Best new infrastructure: the coastal motorway segment

The completion of the Bar-Podgorica motorway section transformed something practical in a way that changed trip design. What used to be a 1 hour 45 minute drive from Budva to the capital is now 55 minutes. This means:

Podgorica is viable as a day trip from the coast — something that was theoretically possible before but in practice lost most of the day to transit. The city has underrated appeal: the Roman ruins at Duklja, the riverwalk along the Morača river, the Night Market (established 2023) on Trg Republike, and a restaurant scene that’s significantly more affordable than the tourist coast.

Skadar Lake becomes a more accessible half-day rather than a full-day commitment. The combination of Skadar Lake plus Virpazar wine tasting plus a stop in old Podgorica now fits comfortably in a single day from Budva.

Best adventure experience: Tara Canyon in May

I’ve written separately about the water level reality of the Tara, but 2025’s May rafting season — which I was able to join in the third week — was exceptional. An above-average winter snowpack had maintained high water into late May, and the rapids on the full-day route were running at a level I hadn’t experienced on previous summer trips.

Book the full-day Tara Canyon rafting experience

The full-day route with overnight camp is the version worth doing if you have two days. The canyon takes on a completely different quality at night — the absence of light pollution in the gorge is absolute, and the sound of the river in darkness is something that stays with you.

Best cultural experience: Cetinje’s November

I spent three days in Cetinje in November, ostensibly to visit the National Museum’s new Njegoš exhibition, and found myself extending it because the town in November has a quality that summer doesn’t. The absence of even the modest tourist presence that July brings left the town in something close to its everyday self — the cafés full of locals, the monastery courtyard empty and genuinely contemplative, the light on the limestone mountains at 3 p.m. with no one around to Instagram it.

The Njegoš exhibition itself — mounted in the Biljarda building — is the best contextualisation of Montenegro’s defining cultural figure I’ve seen in a decade of visits. The curators have done something difficult: making the historical significance of “The Mountain Wreath” accessible to visitors who have no Montenegrin literary background, without reducing it to a Wikipedia summary.

What genuinely changed in 2025

Kotor access fees: Following a summer of serious overcrowding discussion, Kotor municipality trialled a vehicle access fee for the old town approach road on peak days (Saturdays in July and August). The fee — €5 per vehicle — had a modest deterrent effect on drive-through visitors but was not fully enforced and generated more debate than impact. Whether this evolves into a more formal visitor management system in 2026 is the significant open question.

Žabljak’s accommodation quality: The north genuinely upgraded in 2025. Several new properties opened — alpine-style lodges rather than the state-socialist hotels that previously dominated — and the quality gap between the coast’s accommodation and Žabljak’s is narrower than it’s been. This matters for convincing coastal visitors to spend two or three nights in the mountains.

Restaurant quality in Tivat: Porto Montenegro’s dining scene diversified. Beyond the marina’s existing Italian and international options, 2025 saw two well-reviewed openings with serious wine programmes featuring Montenegrin producers — Vranac, Krstač, and the increasingly interesting Kratošija varietal from the Crmnica wine region.

What stayed the same (and why that’s good)

Stari Bar remained uncrowded. The national parks (Prokletije in particular) remained essentially wilderness. The Virpazar market on Saturday mornings remained local and informal. The konoba on the road between Rijeka Crnojevića and Cetinje — I won’t name it because it should stay yours to discover — still serves the best lamb in Montenegro without a menu or a reservation system.

Montenegro’s tourism growth is real and in some places disruptive. But the country’s size and topographic diversity have so far prevented the homogenisation that affects smaller, flatter destinations. There are still corners where the tourism economy doesn’t reach, and in those corners, Montenegro remains one of the most quietly extraordinary places in Europe.

Looking at 2026

The bookings I’ve seen for 2026’s summer season are running ahead of 2025’s comparable period — the new flight routes are filling, and Montenegro’s reputation in the UK and German markets in particular has benefited from the positive coverage the country received through 2025.

What this means for the traveller planning a 2026 trip: book early, seriously consider shoulder season, and make peace with the idea that Kotor and Budva in August are experiences that require managing rather than simply having. The country around them is still magnificent and largely undiscovered. That’s where 2026’s best travel will happen.

The short list

If someone asked me to name the five experiences that defined Montenegro in 2025, they would be:

1. Skadar Lake at dawn in September
2. The Tara Canyon full-day rafting route in May
3. Cetinje in November, National Museum and monastery
4. A boat trip to Gospa od Škrpjela, the island church in the Bay of Kotor, in early evening light
5. Waking up at a Durmitor mountain lodge to the Black Lake in morning mist

None of those five involve a queue. None of them require booking three months in advance. All of them are available in 2026 to anyone who looks slightly past the obvious.

That’s the best argument for Montenegro I can make as the year closes.

What disappointed in 2025

A retrospective worth reading is one that’s honest about failures alongside highlights. In 2025, a few things didn’t live up to expectations:

Kotor cruise ship situation: The discussion about limiting cruise ship berths in Kotor did not result in meaningful action in 2025. The old town on peak days with four ships in port continued to reach a density that made the experience qualitatively poor. The city is beautiful and historically significant, but visiting it on a Friday in August when 8,000 day-visitors are in a space built for 1,000 permanent residents is an experience of crowd management rather than medieval architecture. The solution is simple — visit on a weekday, early morning, outside of July and August — but the problem itself isn’t going away soon.

Montenegrin motorway delays: The Bar-Boljare highway’s northern sections, connecting toward Serbia, continued to face construction delays. The coastal segment has transformed travel times from the coast to Podgorica, but the full country-linking highway is still years from completion. For travellers wanting to cross into Serbia by road, the mountain alternatives remain the only option.

Wi-Fi in rural accommodation: The digital nomad reputation Montenegro is developing is somewhat ahead of its infrastructure in rural areas. A mountain lodge I stayed in near Durmitor in October had internet that was genuinely insufficient for video calls. This is not universal — some lodges have invested seriously — but vetting connectivity before booking is important for anyone with remote work dependencies.

The photo from 2025 I keep coming back to

Not a professional image. A phone photograph taken from the east wall of the Stari Bar ruins in late October, looking out over the olive groves toward the Adriatic ten kilometres away. The groves in the foreground, then the flat coastal plain, then the sea, then the Albanian mountains beyond. The ancient trees casting long shadow in the low afternoon light.

The ruins were empty. The air smelled of October earth. Somewhere in the grove below, a dog was barking at something invisible.

Montenegro in one frame, as complete as the country gets.

Looking forward

The things that defined 2025’s best experiences — the Skadar boat at dawn, the canyon in spring flood, the mountain lodges replacing the old socialist hotels — are all available in 2026 and likely improved. The infrastructure is getting better without (yet) losing the character that makes the country worth visiting.

That’s a narrow window in a tourism destination’s development. Worth using it while it remains open.