Serbia’s Albanians are a native community concentrated in one small region: the Presevo Valley in the far south, pressed against the borders with Kosovo and North Macedonia. In two of its three municipalities Albanians are the majority. It is a community with deep roots, a difficult recent history, and a long-running struggle over rights and representation. This guide covers all of it.
It is part of our Albanians Around the World series.
Quick Facts: Albanians in Serbia
- Population: 61,687 Albanians at the 2022 census, about 94 percent of them in the three Presevo Valley municipalities. Most Albanians boycotted the 2011 census, which recorded only 5,809.
- Where they live: The three southern municipalities of Presevo (93.7% Albanian at the 2022 census), Bujanovac (62.0%), and Medvedja (14.2%).
- Status: A native, indigenous community on the border with Kosovo, recognized as a national minority.
- Recent history: An armed insurgency from 1999 to 2001 ended with an internationally brokered peace deal.
- The wider picture: Part of a continuous Albanian-populated belt linking Kosovo, North Macedonia, and southern Serbia.
On This Page
- How Many Albanians Live in Serbia?
- A Native Community on the Border
- The 2000 to 2001 Insurgency
- Where Albanians Live
- Rights and Grievances
- Frequently Asked Questions
How Many Albanians Live in Serbia?
Serbia’s 2022 census counted 61,687 Albanians, 57,710 of them in Presevo, Bujanovac and Medvedja. They made up 93.7 percent of Presevo and 62.0 percent of Bujanovac, with a smaller community in Medvedja (14.2 percent). The count was contested for a decade: most Albanians boycotted the 2011 census in protest over minority rights, and it recorded only 5,809. The 2002 census, the previous one taken with Albanian participation, had recorded 61,647, almost the same as in 2022.
A Native Community on the Border
The Albanians of the Presevo Valley are not migrants. They have lived in this corner of the southern Balkans for centuries, and their region sits directly against Kosovo and North Macedonia, forming the eastern edge of a continuous Albanian-populated belt. When the modern borders were drawn after the Balkan Wars of 1912 to 1913, the valley was placed inside Serbia while the neighboring Albanian lands went elsewhere, and that division has defined the community ever since. Many here feel a close bond with Kosovo, just over the hills.
The 2000 to 2001 Insurgency
The valley has known conflict. In the aftermath of the Kosovo War, an ethnic Albanian armed group, the Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac (in Albanian, UCPMB), launched an insurgency from 1999 to 2001 with the aim of joining the three municipalities to Kosovo. The fighting unfolded in a demilitarized buffer zone along the boundary. It was brought to an end in 2001 by an internationally brokered settlement, the Konculj Agreement, which offered an amnesty to fighters and promised the integration of Albanians into local institutions and police.
Where Albanians Live
The community is concentrated almost entirely in the three southern municipalities of Presevo, Bujanovac, and Medvedja. Presevo is overwhelmingly Albanian, Bujanovac is a mixed but Albanian-majority town, and Medvedja is majority Serbian with an Albanian minority. The map shows the region.
In the far south of Serbia, the Presevo Valley is home to an Albanian majority. The municipalities of Presevo, Bujanovac, and Medvedja were home to 57,710 Albanians at the 2022 census, a native community on the border with Kosovo. Hover or tap a municipality.
Municipalities shaded by Albanian share (2022 census; most Albanians boycotted the 2011 census). Source: Statistical Office of Serbia.
Rights and Grievances
Relations between the community and the Serbian state have long been strained. Albanian leaders point to under-representation in public jobs and institutions, and to a practice by which the authorities struck thousands of Presevo Valley Albanians who work abroad from the residence rolls, which they say further shrinks the community on paper. The 2011 census boycott grew out of these disputes. At the same time, Albanian is used in local administration and schooling in the valley, Albanian parties govern the local municipalities, and the community remains closely tied to the wider Albanian world across the nearby borders. We present these issues as part of a genuinely contested situation, without taking a side.
What the 2022 Census Counted
Serbia’s most recent census, carried out in October 2022, is the first since 2002 to give a usable count of the community. According to the Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia, 61,687 people declared Albanian ethnicity in 2022, which is 0.93 percent of the country’s population. The 2002 census had recorded 61,647, so the two counts taken with Albanian participation are almost identical.
The 2011 census is the outlier. The Statistical Office’s own footnote explains that in 2011 “the coverage of census units was reduced due to the boycott by the majority of the Albanian ethnic community” in Bujanovac and Preševo. Only 5,809 Albanians were recorded that year, a figure that says more about the boycott than about the population.
The boycott was not repeated in 2022. European Western Balkans, a regional news portal, reported that Albanians took part this time, after staying away in 2011 over grievances that included census forms printed only in Serbian Cyrillic. The same report noted a gap that explains much of the local debate over numbers: preliminary lists registered 60,568 people in Preševo, while 35,097 were counted as inhabitants, because many families also listed relatives who live and work abroad. A census counts usual residents, not everyone with roots in the valley.
Census Figures by Municipality, 2002 and 2022
The table below uses the Statistical Office’s published results for the three municipalities. Shares are calculated from those counts. The 2011 results are left out because of the boycott described above.
| Municipality | Total population, 2002 | Albanians, 2002 | Albanian share, 2002 | Total population, 2022 | Albanians, 2022 | Albanian share, 2022 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Preševo | 34,904 | 31,098 | 89.1% | 33,449 | 31,340 | 93.7% |
| Bujanovac | 43,302 | 23,681 | 54.7% | 41,068 | 25,465 | 62.0% |
| Medveđa | 10,760 | 2,816 | 26.2% | 6,360 | 905 | 14.2% |
| Three municipalities together | 88,966 | 57,595 | 64.7% | 80,877 | 57,710 | 71.4% |
| Serbia (without Kosovo) | 7,498,001 | 61,647 | 0.82% | 6,647,003 | 61,687 | 0.93% |
Two things stand out. About 94 percent of all Albanians counted in Serbia in 2022 live in these three municipalities (57,710 of 61,687). And Medveđa has changed the most: its Albanian population fell from 2,816 to 905 in twenty years, while the municipality as a whole lost about four in ten residents. Bujanovac is the most mixed of the three: the 2022 census also recorded 10,467 Serbs and 3,532 Roma there.
How the 2001 Peace Deal Was Structured
The International Crisis Group, which published four reports on the valley between 2001 and 2007, describes the conflict as a seventeen-month, low-grade insurgency in which about 100 people were killed and about 12,500 Albanians fled the area. The fighting took place inside the Ground Safety Zone, a strip within five kilometers of the Kosovo boundary that was demilitarized by Serbian forces after the Kosovo War of 1999.
The settlement had two halves. On 20 May 2001, in the village of Končulj, UÇPMB commander Shefqet Musliu and Shawn F. Sullivan, the NATO Head of Office in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, signed a demilitarization statement in which the fighters pledged to “demilitarise, demobilise, disarm and disband.” In exchange, the Serbian and Yugoslav governments guaranteed an amnesty, the return of refugees, a multiethnic police force and the integration of Albanians into public institutions. The detailed blueprint was drawn up by Serbia’s deputy prime minister at the time, Nebojša Čović, and is known as the Čović Plan.
The Crisis Group also records the background that Albanian leaders cite: an unofficial referendum in 1992, in which a large majority of the valley’s Albanians voted to join Kosovo, and decades of exclusion from public institutions before the conflict.
The Coordination Body and the Multiethnic Police
Belgrade’s main instrument in the valley is the Coordination Body for the Municipalities of Preševo, Bujanovac and Medveđa. According to the Crisis Group, it began in 2000 as a joint federal and Serbian body of six generals and four civilians that coordinated the security forces, and after the Končulj Agreement it became responsible for carrying out the Čović Plan, with Čović as its head. Today it describes its work as education, economic investment, support for civil society and public services in the three municipalities.
The OSCE took on the policing part of the deal. Its first multiethnic police course opened in Bujanovac on 22 May 2001, two days after the Končulj signing, with twelve Serb and Albanian trainees on a five-day program. “The joint Serb-Albanian participation in the police training is a clear sign that co-existence of different ethnic communities is possible,” said Ambassador Stefano Sannino, who led the OSCE mission at the time. A 2004 OSCE review of police reform found that greater Albanian representation in the police had improved security, and also noted that a promise to transfer officers who had served in Kosovo out of the area had not yet been kept.
A Bilingual University Department in Bujanovac
Higher education has been one of the more concrete results. On 28 October 2011 the University of Novi Sad’s Faculty of Economics in Subotica opened a department in Bujanovac, with 93 students in its first class, about half of them Albanian and half Serb. The OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities, who helped broker the project, reports that teaching is in both Serbian and Albanian, with visiting professors from the State University of Tetovo in North Macedonia covering Albanian-language courses.
The department moved into permanent premises on 17 November 2015, when its first twelve students graduated. The building was funded mainly by the European Union, and the National Council of the Albanian National Minority was one of the project’s partners.
Timeline: Albanians in Southern Serbia Since 1992
- 1992: In an unofficial referendum organized by local leaders, a large majority of Albanians in the valley vote to join Kosovo.
- 1999: After the Kosovo War, a five-kilometer Ground Safety Zone is demilitarized along the boundary with Kosovo.
- Early 2000: Fighters begin organizing under the UÇPMB name and attacking police and army units.
- 2000: The Coordination Body is created by the Yugoslav and Serbian governments.
- 20 May 2001: The demilitarization statement is signed in Končulj; Yugoslav army and police units begin a phased return to the zone that month.
- 22 May 2001: The OSCE begins multiethnic police training in Bujanovac.
- 2002: The census records 61,647 Albanians in Serbia.
- January 2007: For the first time since 2000, Albanians from the valley take part in a national election and win a seat in Serbia’s parliament.
- 2011: Most Albanians boycott the census, which records 5,809. In October the bilingual Bujanovac department opens.
- 17 November 2015: The Bujanovac department’s permanent building is inaugurated.
- October 2022: Albanians take part in the census, which records 61,687.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many Albanians live in Serbia?
The 2022 census counted 61,687, about 94 percent of them in the Presevo Valley. Most Albanians boycotted the 2011 census, so that year’s figure of 5,809 is not comparable. Both the 2002 and 2022 censuses recorded Albanian majorities in Presevo and Bujanovac.
Where do Albanians in Serbia live?
In the far south, in the three municipalities of the Presevo Valley: Presevo, Bujanovac, and Medvedja, on the border with Kosovo and North Macedonia.
What was the Presevo Valley insurgency?
An ethnic Albanian armed uprising from 1999 to 2001, led by the UCPMB, that sought to join the valley to Kosovo. It ended with an internationally brokered agreement and an amnesty in 2001.
Are Albanians native to southern Serbia?
Yes. They are an indigenous community that has lived in the Presevo Valley for centuries, part of a continuous Albanian-populated belt with Kosovo and North Macedonia.
Sources
- Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia, census data
- Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia, report on the Albanian minority
- Wikipedia: Albanians in Serbia
- Wikipedia: Insurgency in the Presevo Valley
- Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia: 2022 Census, Ethnicity, data by municipalities and cities
- Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia: 2002 Census, National or ethnic affiliation, data by settlement
- International Crisis Group: Serbia, Maintaining Peace in the Presevo Valley (Europe Report 186, 2007)
- OSCE Mission to Serbia: First multi-ethnic police training starts in southern Serbia (22 May 2001)
- OSCE Mission to Serbia and Montenegro: Police Reform in Serbia (2004)
- OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities: Bujanovac’s new multilingual university department
- OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities: Serbian Prime Minister inaugurates OSCE-supported multilingual university department in southern Serbia
- European Western Balkans: Will participation in the census improve the position of the Albanian minority in Serbia?
Related Reading
- Albanians Around the World: The Global Diaspora
- Albanians in North Macedonia
- Albanians in Montenegro
- Is Kosovo Albanian?
More Albanian diaspora communities
Author: Val Demiri
Valbona is an editor and writer at ALB Connection, where she covers the people, businesses, and culture shaping the Albanian diaspora. A journalism graduate of the University of Iowa, her work spans community profiles, success stories, and features on Albanian life across the US, Europe, and beyond. She is drawn to stories that celebrate Albanian achievement and keep the community connected across borders.
