What connects Lisbon, Zaragoza, Ios, Astana and Beograd? We are talking about the cities where specialized events have been held or will be held in them, such as Belgrade Exspo exhibitions.
These exhibitions are different from the big World Expo events. As stated on the website of the International Bureau of Exhibitions (BIE), under whose auspices all Expo events are organized, Specialized exhibitions, also known as "internationally recognized exhibitions", are designed to deal with a specific global challenge.
On the other hand, the World Exspo exhibitions, which are also called "internationally registered exhibitions", represent large global gatherings of countries, dedicated to finding solutions for the most important challenges of the modern world, through broad and universal themes.
These two types of Expo exhibitions differ in scope, duration, breadth of topic, number of visitors, but also in costs.
How much do specialized Expo exhibitions cost?
Although smaller in scale compared to World Expo events, specialized exhibitions also require large investments. Host cities spend billions of dollars to organize them.
The last specialized Expo exhibition was held in 2017 in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan. According to the available data, that country invested about 2,1 billion US dollars in the organization of the project.
A similar amount was spent on the organization of the Expo in the South Korean coastal city of Ios, held five years earlier.
How much will the Expo in Belgrade cost?
Estimates of the costs of Expo in Belgrade they changed over time.
In January 2024, the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, presented the "Leap into the Future - Serbia EXPO 2027" plan and said that in the next three and a half to four years, Serbia will Expo 2027 invest 17,8 billion euros.
At that time, he specifically presented the concept of planning and building complex infrastructure within the implementation of the International Specialized Exhibition Expo 2027 in Belgrade, which, as he explained, will largely represent the investment core in the upcoming period.
"We plan to invest 17,8 billion euros, which is at the level of the one-year budget of the Republic of Serbia," said Vučić at the time.
Changed has a jump to the future
Photo: Tanjug/Marko DjokovicWhat did Leap into the Future include?
In the meantime, the name of the project has been changed to "Leap into the future - Serbia 2027" and as Finance Minister Siniša Mali explained in March 2025, it is wider than the Expo project itself, denying claims that around 18 billion euros will be invested in it.
Mali, as announced by the Ministry of Finance, said that as part of the "Leap into the Future" program, around 2027 billion euros will be invested throughout Serbia until 18 in more than 300 projects, and among other things, schools, health facilities, highways, roads, high-speed railways, the BIO4 campus will be built and renovated.
The Expo itself, Mali explained, includes an investment of around 1,2 billion euros, and that is for the construction, as he said, of a new city in Surčin, which will contain a residential complex, an aquatic center and a national stadium.
The General Secretary of the International Bureau for Exhibitions, Dimitri Kerkezes, then said that the costs for the Expo exhibition in Serbia amount to 1,3 billion euros with all the necessary infrastructure, and that he knows nothing about the 18 billion that the Government of Serbia presented for this project. He emphasized that it is not a project for an individual or a group, but for the entire nation.
Kerkeses said that he "was never presented, nor did he see that the Government of Serbia presented a budget of 18 billion euros for this event".
"We had an insight into what was presented to the Executive Committee and our General Assembly, and it is in the range of one billion to 1,3 billion euros - and that makes sense to us", said Kerkezes and added that the investment of 18 billion as part of the Expo will not be accepted, "because it has nothing to do with the event itself. But, I hope it is part of a wider incentive for the development of the country".
Thus, until a warning came from the Expo center about figures and underlining everything under it, all kinds of projects were linked to the Expo, and part of the public warned that this was done in order to whitewash tenders and building permits.
How much do World Expo exhibitions cost?
The last five World Expo exhibitions were organized in Aichi, Shanghai, Milan, Dubai and Osaka, while the next one will be organized in 2030 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Apart from the topics and the number of visitors, these exhibitions also differ from the specialized ones in terms of duration.
This year's World Expo in Osaka gathered more than 29 million visitors. It lasted 187 days, was organized on 155 hectares, and the costs of the organization amounted to about 1,6 billion dollars.
Photo: Tanjug/Dragan KujundžićThe President of Serbia in Osaka at the Expo exhibition
According to the announcements, the expo in Belgrade will last 93 days, occupy about 25 hectares, and about four million visitors are expected, with a similar estimated cost as in Osaka.
Expo in Dubai, which was postponed from 2020 due to the pandemic to the period from October 2021 to March 2022, was visited by 24,1 million people. The exhibition covered 438 hectares, had about 200 exhibitors, and the entire project cost about seven billion dollars.
Photo: AP Photo/Jon Gambrell, FileExpo in Dubai
The World Expo exhibition in Milan in 2015 attracted 21,5 million visitors, was organized on 110 hectares and cost about 2,2 billion euros.
The most visited and one of the most expensive was the Expo exhibition in Shanghai in 2010, which was visited by more than 73 million people. It spread over 523 hectares, and the costs of the organization exceeded four billion dollars, while the investments in the wider reconstruction of the city, according to media reports, were ten times higher.
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