Subotica

The town first appears in records in 1391 as Zabotka or Zabatka, a small settlement in the medieval Kingdom of Hungary; the name probably comes from a Slavic word for a place with a Saturday market. Under Ottoman rule from the 16th century much of the population fled and settlers came from the Balkans, and in 1687 Catholic Dalmatians, the ancestors of today's Bunjevci, arrived in large numbers. Under the Habsburgs the town was renamed Sent-Maria in 1743 and Maria-Theresiapolis in 1779, when Empress Maria Theresa made it a free royal town.

In the 19th century the population doubled twice as Hungarians and Jews settled beside the Bunjevci and Serbs. The theatre opened in 1854, the railway arrived in 1869, and at the turn of the century the town's grain wealth paid for the Hungarian Secession buildings of Marcell Komor, Dezső Jakab and Ferenc Raichle: the synagogue completed in 1903, Raichle's palace of 1904 and the City Hall of 1908–1912.

In 1918 Subotica joined the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and between the wars it was the third-largest city in Yugoslavia, after Belgrade and Zagreb. Hungarian troops entered in April 1941; the city lost about 7,000 people in the war, mostly Serbs, Hungarians and Jews, and about 8,000 more, mainly Hungarians, were killed by the Partisans in 1944–45. During the wars of the 1990s Serb refugees arrived from Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo while many Hungarians and Croats left. The old theatre, though a protected monument, was demolished in 2007 to make way for a new building.

Subotica is built on the overlap of peoples. Serbian is the most used language, but almost 30 per cent of residents use Hungarian every day, and the Bunjevci — a South Slavic Catholic community regarded by some as Croats and by others as a separate people — have their own harvest festival, Dužijanca. Schools teach in Serbian, Hungarian and Croatian; the Hungarian daily Magyar Szó is published in the city, alongside newspapers in Serbian and Croatian. Almost half the population is Catholic, the highest share of any city in Serbia, with a third Orthodox.

Architecture is the city's pride. Its Hungarian Secession buildings combine Art Nouveau plant ornament and symbolic figures with traditional Hungarian motifs, and Komor and Jakab, the architects of the City Hall and the synagogue, also designed the Grand Terrace and the Women's Lido at Palić.

Subotica calls itself a festival city, with more than 17 festivals a year. The Palić European Film Festival brings cinema to the lake each summer, and Dužijanca, the Bunjevci harvest festival of July and August, gives thanks for the harvest with a procession through town. Straw art, a naive folk art of pictures made from straw, is kept alive in the villages around the city.

The 2022 census counted about 89,000 people in the city proper and about 124,000 in its administrative area, which includes the town of Palić and 17 villages, some with Hungarian and some with Croat majorities. It is the administrative centre of the North Bačka District and the fifth-largest city in Serbia.

The farmland around the city feeds its economy. Food companies include the confectioner Pionir, the cereal maker Fidelinka, a dairy and a maker of spirits, while the largest export industry is a Siemens factory making wind turbine generators. A faculty of the University of Novi Sad teaches trainee teachers in Hungarian here, and tourism centres on the lake.

Life is calm and centred on the Korzo and the squares, where fountains and café terraces draw people in the evening, and in summer many families head to Palić's lakeside. Since 2025 the high-speed train has put Belgrade within easy reach, and Szeged in Hungary is a short trip across the border.

The kitchen mixes the Balkan grill with the Central European stew pot. Gulaš and paprikaš, meat stews of Hungarian origin, are local favourites, and grill houses marked roštilj serve ćevapi in lepinja flatbread and pljeskavica, a patty of spiced minced meat. Palačinke, thin pancakes, come with savoury fillings such as chicken or minced meat with cream, or sweet ones.

Burek is the local fast food: a pastry filled with cheese, minced meat or mushroom, sold in most bakeries and often eaten with drinkable yoghurt. The grain, fruit and dairy farms of the surrounding plain supply the city's food industry, from the confectioner Pionir to the cereal maker Fidelinka.

Many households in the region make their own rakija from local stone fruit, apples, pears and grapes, and Gorki List, a bitter herbal liqueur whose name means "bitter leaf", is a local speciality. There are traditional wineries close to the city.