Albania Motorcycle Tour Balkans 2026

Seven Riders, Seven Countries, One Road: Albania and the Balkans on BMW GS Motorcycles

Our 2026 motorcycle tour through Albania and the Balkans began in Trogir, Croatia, on 20 August and took seven experienced riders across seven countries and a total of 4,648 km. From Croatia, our route led through Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Romania, North Macedonia, Albania and Montenegro before returning to Trogir at the end of the journey.

This particular tour was deliberately different from the standard itinerary published on our website. For these seven riders, we created a specially adapted version of our Balkan-Carpathians-Albanian Alps Tour 1, changing parts of the route, choosing different overnight stops and adding roads and destinations that we considered particularly worthwhile. The published tour therefore served as the foundation — but this was our own route for this particular group.

All seven riders travelled to Croatia with their luggage and riding gear, while the motorcycles came from our own BMW GS rental fleet at MotoGS Rental Croatia. No motorcycles had to be shipped across continents, and no support vehicle followed the group. Everything needed for the journey travelled with us on the bikes.

The group came from four countries and three continents. Avi travelled from the United Kingdom and rode an F800GS. Adolfo came from Uruguay on an F850GS, while Bill from Canada rode another F850GS. Peter and Juan travelled from Chile, riding an R1250GS and an R1300GS respectively, while Tony and Lisa came from Canada and each rode an R1300GS.

What followed was not simply a ride from one famous destination to the next. The route combined the great motorcycle roads of the Carpathians and the Balkans with small towns, remote mountain roads, spectacular viewpoints, historic places and several overnight stops far away from the usual tourist routes. Some of the most memorable moments would come in places where there was almost nothing around us except mountains, rivers and the road ahead.

From Trogir to Mostar: Klis Fortress and the First Roads of the Balkans

Our journey started in Trogir, just a few minutes from Split Airport on the Croatian Adriatic coast. All riders were collected from the airport and transferred to the hotel, so nobody had to organise transport after arriving with luggage and motorcycle gear.

The real preparation began on the morning before departure. At around 10:00 a.m. we met for the rider briefing, went through the route, border crossings, group riding procedures and the practical details for the days ahead. The BMW GS motorcycles were prepared and loaded at the same time, giving everyone enough opportunity to become familiar with their bike before the tour actually started. Anything that was not needed during the journey could remain safely stored at our base in Croatia.

There is no support vehicle on this tour. Everything travels with us on the motorcycles. Each BMW GS was therefore equipped for a long-distance journey with lockable side cases, a top case, tank bag, removable inner bags and additional storage on the bike. It is a simple system: in the evening you take the inner bags into the hotel, and the cases stay on the motorcycle.

Once the preparation was finished, we walked into Trogir’s historic old town for our welcome dinner. Until that evening, most of the seven riders had never met each other. A few hours later, the first conversations about motorcycles, previous journeys and the road ahead had already started. That is usually the moment when seven individual riders begin to become a group.

At 8:00 the following morning, the tour finally began. Instead of heading directly for the border, our first destination was Klis Fortress, high above Split. The old fortress sits on a rocky ridge between the mountains and the Adriatic and offers a spectacular view over Split, the coastline and the islands beyond. It was an ideal first stop — not because we had already ridden very far, but because it immediately showed what this journey was going to be about: motorcycles, history, mountains and roads with a view.

From Klis we descended back toward the Adriatic and continued south to Omiš, where the Cetina River reaches the sea between steep limestone mountains. After a coffee and a short break, the route left the Croatian coast and turned inland toward Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The first riding day covered only around 200 km, deliberately giving everyone time to get comfortable on their motorcycle and settle into the rhythm of riding as a group. After crossing the Croatia–Bosnia and Herzegovina border, the landscape gradually changed again as we continued toward Mostar.

By late afternoon the motorcycles were parked at our hotel and the riding gear was put away. But the day was not finished. We walked into the centre of Mostar and down toward the famous Stari Most – the Old Bridge, before ending our first day together over dinner in the historic old town.

It was not a long first stage, and that was exactly the idea. There would be much longer days ahead. The first 200 kilometres were about arriving properly — on the motorcycles, in the group and in the Balkans.

Through the Balkans

Bosnia slows you down, in a good way. The roads narrow, traffic thins out, and much of the day is spent riding through villages where nothing much is happening. It is not fast riding. It is the kind where you reach the hotel in the evening and realise you actually looked at the country you crossed.

From Mostar we rode east towards the Danube and crossed into Serbia, ending the day in Zlatibor in the west of the country. The next day took us on to Kovin, on the Danube east of Belgrade, with a stop at the Risovača cave on the way — an archaeological site rather than a show cave, and worth the ticket, which is included in the tour price. The night was at the HARIZMA hotel in Kovin, a small town with no tourist traffic and plenty of room to park seven GS bikes.

Kovin was a late addition. We revised the accommodation shortly before departure to improve the run of the route, which is why two of the overnights on this departure differ from the published itinerary.

Then the Romanian border. We followed the Danube down to the Iron Gate, where the river cuts the gorge that separates Serbia from Romania and the water goes wide and slow between rock walls. On the far side the road turns up into the hills and the Carpathians start showing on the horizon as a grey line. You spend the last hour of that day riding towards them, and we finished it at the Hotel Conacu Boierului in Ponoarele. Stunning place to stay, staff absolutely incredible. 

Romania and the Carpathians

Romania was the longest stretch of the tour and the part that came up most often at dinner. It also has two of the best-known motorcycle roads in Europe, and this route rides both.

The Transalpina came first, over the Southern Carpathians towards Alba Iulia. It climbs out of the valley in long switchbacks, keeps climbing, and then stays high for a long time. The temperature drops as you go up. At the top there are stalls selling honey and wool socks and a good number of parked motorcycles. We had offered the group the choice of the long route or the short one, to be decided at the bottom. Everyone took the long one.

The Transfăgărășan came the next day, south through Cozia National Park and then up. It is a different road from the Transalpina — tighter, busier, more theatrical, with the hairpins stacked close enough that you can see three of them at once. It only opens from July, which is part of why this tour runs in late August. We spent the night up near Lake Bâlea and rode the northern half the following morning, then dropped into central Transylvania and on to Bran, where the schedule gives everyone a rest day and the bikes stay available for anyone who wants to go and look at Bran Castle.

That rest day is also when three of the bikes got new tyres. We had seen it coming — the first week is hard on rubber, and three sets were going to be marginal for the Albanian Alps — so the appointment was booked before the tour left Croatia, at a partner workshop in Brașov. The group was going to Brașov on the rest day anyway. We rode in, the tyres were already there waiting, and the bikes went up on the ramps while everyone else had a look around the old town.

Worth being clear about how that works, because people ask. These are our motorcycles. The wear was ours to anticipate, the workshop is part of our partner network of dealers and workshops, and the bill was ours. No rider spent a morning hunting for a dealer in a language they do not speak, nobody paid anything out of pocket, and no riding time was lost, because it happened on a day already set aside. It turned into an interesting hour of the rest day rather than an interruption to the tour. That is a different situation from having your own bike need parts in a foreign country, and it is one of the better arguments for renting rather than shipping.

Want the full day-by-day and the current departure dates? They are on the Balkan-Carpathians-Albanian Alps Tour 1 page.

Into Albania

From Transylvania we turned back south-west, past Drobeta-Turnu Severin on the Danube, then across Serbia again — Lake Vlasina, close to the Bulgarian border, skirting Kosovo — and into North Macedonia. Skopje got us an old town and a bazaar. Lake Ohrid got us a hotel with the lake in front of it.

The ride around Ohrid crosses the Albanian border three times in a day, which sounds like an administrative nightmare and is mostly just a series of short queues. Then Lezhë, and then the mountains.

The roads in the Albanian Alps are narrower and rougher than anything we had ridden up to that point. The surface changes every few hundred metres — decent tarmac, broken stone, compacted gravel, tarmac again. Villages with one shop. Very little traffic, and once you are up high, almost no tourism infrastructure at all. We rode in towards Theth, up the valley, which is the kind of route you attempt rather than schedule.

This is the riding people book this tour for. It asks more of you than the Transalpina does. Long climbs with nothing on the drop side, hairpins tight enough that the big R1300s were working for them, and passes where you stop, take your helmet off, and look at mountains in every direction with nothing built on any of them.

From the Albanian Alps the route crosses into Montenegro and comes down to Kotor, on the bay, which is a considerable change of scenery in one day. After Kotor we rode up to Žabljak and into Durmitor National Park for the Tara canyon.

The Tara is the one view most of the group would pick out of the whole trip. You come along the rim without really seeing it, then the road starts down and it opens up beside you: green river a long way below, vertical limestone walls running on for kilometres, and the Tara bridge spanning the gap. You cannot look at that and ride at the same time, so we pulled over and looked at it properly.

The next day we went down onto the river itself. The rafting is included in the tour price, transfers and lunch with it, and it starts at Splavište inside the national park. Eighteen days is long enough that a day out of the saddle, at the bottom of a canyon you rode along the top of the day before, lands better than another 250 km would have.

The Group: Who Books a Motorcycle Tour Through Albania and the Balkans

There is no way to put a group like this together on purpose. Seven people book the same eighteen days and turn up in the same hotel in Trogir.

Avi came from the UK, and was born in India. Adolfo flew in from Uruguay. Bill, Tony and Lisa came from Canada, with Tony and Lisa travelling as a couple and riding a bike each. Peter and Juan came from Chile. Four countries of origin, three continents' worth of flights, one small town on the Croatian coast.

What made that possible is the part of the tour that happens before anyone turns a wheel. None of these riders brought a motorcycle. Shipping a GS from Toronto or Montevideo for eighteen days means crating, freight, customs paperwork and a carnet, and it costs more than the tour. Flying in and collecting a bike from our BMW GS rental fleet in Croatia removes all of that. You arrive with your helmet and your gear and the bike is serviced, fuelled, insured and fitted out when you get there.

It also means riders pick the machine they actually want rather than the one they happen to own. Tony and Lisa both wanted R1300GS and took two. Avi wanted something lighter and took the F800. Adolfo and Bill went for F850s, Peter for an R1250 and Juan for the third R1300. The fleet runs from the F750GS up to the R1300GS, with lowered variants of some models, which matters if you have spent years being told you are too short for an adventure bike.

Having the whole group on one bike family also makes a tour like this easier to run — similar riding positions, similar fuel range, similar composure on a bad surface. When a road turns difficult, nobody is on the wrong bike for it.

By the second week, dinner had the shorthand you only get from riding together all day. Somebody mentions a corner and everyone already knows which one.

The Return, and the Numbers

From the Tara we rode back to Žabljak and out to the Adriatic, down to Dubrovnik for an afternoon in the old town. The last stage runs north along the Jadranska Magistrala, the coast road, back to Trogir — the same hotel everyone had checked into eighteen days earlier, and the farewell dinner that evening.

The final tally: 4,648 km ridden, seven countries, fifteen riding days, two rest days, one canyon from the top and from the bottom, three sets of tyres, and about two days of Albanian mountain road that we would go back for first.

If you compare that distance to the tour page you will find a gap. The published route is around 4,055 km; we rode 4,648. The difference is roughly 600 km of detours our guide added while we were out there — side roads and short diversions he knows from years of riding the region, taken because they were there and because they were better than the direct line. Nobody regretted any of them. The route is a plan, not a laminated sheet, and if there is something worth seeing twenty minutes off it, you will be shown it.

Most riders do this tour the way these seven did — fly into Split, collect a bike, ride, fly home. The rental side is our own operation rather than a third party, which is why the bike at handover and the bike in the brochure are the same bike, and why a tyre in Transylvania is our problem rather than yours.

The same departure window runs again in 2027 and 2028, with an English, German and Spanish speaking guide riding with the group. Full route, inclusions and dates are on the Balkan-Carpathians-Albanian Alps Tour 1 page, the fleet is at MotoGS Rental, and when you are ready you can register for a place. Or write to us with questions first under tour inquire — some people do.