North Macedonia Travel Guide

Entry requirements

Citizens of the European Union and of the countries signatories to the Schengen Agreement can enter with just a valid officially issued ID card or a passport. Visas are not required by nationals from the following countries:

The official currency of North Macedonia is the denar (plural denari), denoted by the abbreviation "ден" (den) (international code: MKD). This travel guide uses just denar, e.g. 100 denar. Many Macedonians quote prices in euro (€). The new denar replaced the old denar in 1993 at a rate of 100:1.

By car

In this mountainous developing country, the roads are often narrow and not very well maintained, with warning signs for the quite frequent sharp turns rarely provided, and the safety barriers between your tires and high cliffs often rusty, or sometimes completely absent. In the north, there is a short network of motorways with separated directions and a posted speed limit of 120 km/h, linking Skopje with Tetovo and Gostivar in the west, and with the Alexander the Great Airport and Kumanovo in the east, but the surface quality is hardly better than the rest of the roads. The toll c…

Macedonian is the official and national language, and is spoken in various dialects across each corner of the country. Macedonian is a Slavic language, and so speakers of closely-related Bulgarian and Serbo-Croatian should have no problem getting by. Albanian is co-official at the national level, and is widely used in the north and west of the country. Turkish, Serbo-Croatian, Romani (Gypsy), and Aromanian are spoken by smaller ethnic minorities. Šuto Orizari (better known as Shutka), a northern…

North Macedonia is a safe country. Driving is not ill-advised, but it's recommended for foreigners to try to use taxis and public transport wherever possible. As in all countries, keep an eye out for pickpockets and all valuables safe. Hotels and most private accommodation will offer a safe to store valuables and cash in.

Water is safe to drink and there are public drinking water fountains in most public places. It is advisable to wash all fruit and vegetables. Use caution when eating red meat at restaurants. Although Macedonian cuisine typically revolves around grills ("skara") there are some restaurants that do not use proper or clean methods of cooking, which if practised in many Western countries would be seen as a violation of certain health regulations. Bad restaurants can be spotted easily; they will probably not look very appealing and will not have many customers. However, the vast majority of restaura…

Domestic phones

Domestic telephone service is available in all inhabited towns, via VoIP only. In fact, North Macedonia was the first country in Europe to go fully VoIP, back in 2014. There is an affordable fixed phone service (wireless and easy to install) from the mobile operator ONE , available prepaid (without a monthly fee, 12 months availability without recharge, recharging for only 500 denar/€8) and postpaid.

It is advisable to simply refer to the country as "Macedonia". The "north" part of the name, added in 2019 to resolve a naming dispute with Greece, has not made it into everyday use among Macedonians and may never do so. Many, in fact, consider it offensive. Macedonia is directly transliterated from the Cyrillic as Makedonija, and is pronounced roughly how it would appear to an English speaker: "mahk-eh-DOHN-ee-yah".