Shopping in Montenegro

Most shops in Montenegro are closed on Sundays and public holidays. Since February 2026, Article 35b of the Internal Trade Act bans retail trade on those days; pharmacies, bakeries, flower and souvenir shops, petrol stations, markets and shops in stations, airports and ports may still open. From Monday to Saturday each shop sets its own hours, within limits set by its municipality. Visitors can reclaim VAT on purchases over EUR 100 from one seller; the shopping centres and markets below are in Podgorica, Budva, Kotor, Tivat and Bar.

Sundays and public holidays

Under Article 35b of the Internal Trade Act (Sl. list CG 21/2026, in force since its publication on 19 February 2026), retail and wholesale trade may not be carried out on Sundays or on state and other public holidays. These may still open:

• pharmacies;
• shops and kiosks selling mainly one kind of goods: bread and bakery products, cakes, flowers, souvenirs, newspapers, plant-protection products or funeral equipment;
• petrol stations and their shops;
• markets (pijaca), and stalls, vending machines and mobile shops;
• shops and kiosks inside bus and railway stations, airports and ports;
• stalls at events, festivals, fairs and film screenings;
• wholesale warehouses.

Supermarkets may therefore not open on Sundays or public holidays unless they are inside a station, airport or port, and in shopping centres only shops of the exempt kinds, such as a pharmacy, may open. For food on a Sunday, that leaves bakeries, petrol-station shops, shops in stations, airports and ports, and the markets.

Older articles may say the opposite. A Sunday ban first came in 2019 (Article 35a); the Constitutional Court annulled it on 28 January 2026, and Parliament adopted the new Article 35b on 16 February 2026. Because the rule has changed more than once, check locally if a Sunday shop matters to your plans.

On weekdays and Saturdays the municipalities set the frame. In Kotor, shops may open within 07:00-23:00 from 1 April to 31 October and 07:00-22:00 in winter. In Bar, shops may open within 06:00-23:00 in summer and 06:00-22:00 in winter, shopping centres within 06:00-22:00, and petrol stations around the clock.

Where to shop

Podgorica

BIG Fashion Podgorica, the former Delta City, is on Bulevar Knjaza Danila. Its operator lists the shops as open 10:00-22:00 and closed on Sundays. Restaurants open 09:00-22:00, the pharmacy 09:00-22:00, the Aroma store 08:00-22:00 and the Cineplexx cinema 15:00-00:00. Phone +382 68 878 637.

Mall of Montenegro is at Bulevar Save Kovačevića 74 and opens Monday to Saturday 09:00-22:00, closed on Sundays; the mall's own site publishes no hours. The centre covers 15,000 m², with a hypermarket of more than 4,000 m². Info desk +382 67 257 793.

Budva

TQ Plaza, on Mediteranska street, opens Monday to Saturday 09:00-22:00 and is closed on Sundays. The town's green market reopened in March 2026 after reconstruction, inside a shopping centre, open 07:00-15:00 on weekdays and Saturdays.

Kotor

TC Kamelija on Trg Mata Petrovića has 31 shops and 3 restaurants on a ground floor and two upper floors. The centre gives its hours as 07:00-23:00 without naming days. The town market (mješovita pijaca) is below the walls of the Old Town.

Tivat

The shops at Porto Montenegro have no common hours: each sets its own, mostly Monday to Saturday (for example 10:00-20:00 or 10:00-22:00), and few open on Sundays. The marina operator, Adriatic Marinas, is on +382 32 661 061.

Bar

HDL Retail Park on Bulevar JNA opened on 28 April 2026, with an HDL hypermarket, Tehnomax, LC Waikiki and Jumbo in a 15,000 m² building within a complex of over 25,000 m². It publishes no hours; Bar's municipal decision allows shopping centres to open within 06:00-22:00. The same decision lets Bar's green and mixed markets open every day, Sundays included.

Opening hours of shopping centres and markets

Podgorica's market company sets hours by season, with a summer schedule from 1 April to 1 November and a winter one for the rest of the year; in 2025/26 and 2026 the green and mixed-goods markets kept the same hours all year. The decisions give hours by type of market, not by site. The Bar and Kotor figures are the ranges the municipal decisions allow. Shop and market hours change, so check with the centre or market, or ask locally, before a special trip.

Markets

Markets are exempt from the Sunday ban. In Podgorica the city company Tržnice i pijace runs them. The Bazar, which the company runs as its green market, is at Blaža Jovanovića 10 and opened in October 2012: stalls sell fruit and vegetables, cheese and dairy, eggs and flowers, and its shops sell fish, domestic cured meat and chicken. The company also runs TC Pobrežje and Tržnica Forum. In Bar, the municipal company's 2021 work programme lists green markets in Bar, Stari Bar, Sutomore, Virpazar and Ostros, and fish and dairy sections at the Bar market.

Tax-free shopping: the VAT refund

A visitor with neither permanent nor temporary residence in Montenegro can reclaim VAT on goods taken out of the country in personal luggage, when one invoice, or several invoices from the same seller on the same day, comes to more than EUR 100. The steps:

1. Pay the full price and ask the shop for form PDV-PP. It comes in three copies; you keep the original and one copy, with the receipts.
2. Take the goods out of Montenegro within three months of the purchase. Posting them abroad also counts.
3. At the border, show customs your passport, the unused goods, the receipts and the form signed by the seller. Customs stamps the form and enters the exit date.
4. Return the stamped original to the shop within six months of the invoice date. Post is allowed; add your bank account number.
5. The shop refunds the VAT in euros: in cash at once, or by bank transfer within 15 days.

Fuel and other mineral oils, alcoholic drinks and tobacco are excluded. The shop that sold the goods pays the refund itself. These steps are from the VAT rulebook (Articles 115-119) in a consolidated text current to 2021; a retailer's own tax-free page gives the same EUR 100 threshold, form and customs stamp.

What to bring home

Local products worth bringing home:

• Njeguški pršut, dry-cured pork ham smoked over beech, and other dried meats: Njeguški sausage, košet (dried mutton leg) and kastradina (dried mutton).
• Cheese: Njeguški, Pljevaljski, Kolašin lisnati, prljo, skorup, masni kučki and krajinski goat cheese.
• Wine from native grapes: Vranac, Kratošija, Krstač and Žižak (Žižko). Crmnica is called the cradle of Vranac. Plantaže's vineyard at Ćemovsko polje covers about 2,300 ha; its online shop delivers only within Podgorica.
• Medovina (mead) and homemade brandy.
• Smoked carp and ukljeva (bleak) from Skadar Lake.

Protected names include Njeguški pršut, Pljevaljski sir, Kolašinski lisnati sir, Durmitorski skorup, flower honey (Cvijetni med) and Peraška torta. For olive oil, Stari Bar holds the Maslinijada olive festival in November.

Taking food and drink into the EU

• Meat and milk products from Montenegro may not be brought into the EU by travellers, so pršut and cheese cannot go in your luggage.
• Fish is allowed up to 20 kg per person; honey and other animal products up to 2 kg.
• Duty-free alcohol: 4 litres of still wine and 16 litres of beer, plus either 1 litre of spirits over 22% or 2 litres of fortified or sparkling wine.
• Tobacco: 200 cigarettes, or 40 when entering Croatia, Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland or Slovakia by land or sea, or Estonia or Romania by any route.
• Travellers under 17 get no alcohol or tobacco allowance.
• Other goods: up to EUR 430 by air or sea, EUR 300 otherwise; some EU countries allow only EUR 150 for travellers under 15.

Wine, rakija and other alcohol are also excluded from the Montenegrin VAT refund.

Paying

Prices are in euros, Montenegro's sole legal tender since 2002. If a card terminal or ATM offers to charge your card in your home currency, choose euros: banks add a markup to the home-currency option, and your card issuer's own conversion terms apply either way. Some banks also charge a fixed fee per withdrawal with a foreign card. Cards are not taken everywhere, so carry some cash and withdraw it at ATMs inside banks where you can. Cash of EUR 10,000 or more must be declared at the border. Banks' fees and the details are on the ATMs, cards and cash page.

Where to go next

• ATMs, cards and cash
• Public holidays, when shops close
• Pharmacies, open on Sundays
• Travel tips
• Podgorica, Budva, Kotor, Tivat and Bar