Driving in Montenegro.
What the roads ask for.

Fifty in built-up areas unless a sign says otherwise, and eighty on the open road. The coast road is a single carriageway through one town after another.

Dipped headlights are used in the daytime, all year round and on all roads. A warning triangle is carried by law as well. Check it is in the car at the handover.

The drink-drive limit is 0.03 per cent, lower than anywhere in the United Kingdom.

Winter tyres are required when the weather requires them; the rule gives no date range. Dates quoted elsewhere are not given here, because no Montenegrin official source for them has been found.

From Ulcinj, the Adriatic highway runs north through Bar, Sutomore and Budva towards the Bay of Kotor. It is busiest in July and August. Budva and the coast beyond it is about ninety minutes and sixty-five kilometres from Ulcinj, an average under fifty kilometres an hour.

Bar is forty minutes north, and the coast road beyond it through Sutomore has the heaviest summer traffic. Sveti Stefan is about eighty-five minutes. Kotor is around two hours, and so is Tivat Airport. Bar’s tourist organisation puts the old olive at Mirovica on the fifth kilometre of the road towards Ulcinj, open through the year with an entrance fee, on one of the main roads through Montenegro.

The towns along the coast road each drop the limit to fifty.

Parking and fines sit with the renter for the whole rental. The cars page covers what to look for in the car itself: size and gearbox. Most of what is listed here is automatic.

The one charge a visitor is likely to meet is the Sozina tunnel, on the direct road between the coast and Podgorica. The alternative is the old road over the pass, which is slower. Under the rental conditions the charge is yours, along with fuel, parking and fines. The capital is about an hour and forty minutes from Ulcinj, and the run inland to Lake Skadar is on the same road: Virpazar is about sixty-five minutes from the coast.

North of the capital the distances are longer and the roads are mountain roads.

Cetinje is about an hour and fifty-five minutes from Ulcinj, Herceg Novi at the far end of the coast is over two and a half hours, and Zabljak in the north is four hours and more.

A section of motorway north of Podgorica has been open since 2022; its speed limit is not given here because no Montenegrin official source for it has been found.

Rental cars are allowed on paved public roads only. It applies where beach access roads turn to sand or gravel.

Signed turn-offs lead towards the water, and some end in sand, gravel or ruts, including tracks a map shows as roads. A car on sand or an unmade track is outside the conditions.

The access roads onto Velika Plaza end at lots near the sand, and the beach itself is not a road. Ada Bojana is reached by a bridge, and the island beyond the bridge has no tarmac on it at all. At both, park and walk, and the car for all of it can be any car that parks easily.

If the plan includes another country, add the cross-border option when you book, on a car that offers it.

The Albanian border at Sukobin is about half an hour from Ulcinj, and Shkoder about an hour. The fee for the add-on is shown on each car.

Booking a one-way means finishing somewhere other than you started, and it is priced as one. Every drop-off point this site offers is Montenegrin, so a one-way booked here runs between Montenegrin towns and a car taken abroad comes home with you.

Of the two airports, the Podgorica Airport pickup is 75 km and about an hour and a half from Ulcinj; Tivat is 85 km and about two hours. For the return, allow for summer traffic through Sutomore and refuel before the airport. The car goes back with the level of fuel it was given.

At the return, walk round the car with the person taking it back, as at the handover, with the photographs from collection on your phone. Wheels, windscreen, underside and interior are what the standard cover excludes.

A car returned so dirty that it hinders inspection is washed at the customer’s expense.