Bar-Bari Ferry 2026: 2 Ways to Italy, Flights From Podgorica

Two routes get you from Montenegro to Italy right now, and neither of them leaves from Bar. Drive 2.5-3 hours south to Durrës in Albania for Adria Ferries’ overnight boat to Bari (or on to Vlorë, further south, for Starlines’ car ferry to Brindisi), or fly Air Montenegro from Podgorica to Rome: its own booking page priced a seat on the 2 October flight at €44.47 one-way (~$51 / £38) when we checked on 23 September 2026, and fares move by date, so price your own day on the airline’s site. What doesn’t run is the direct Bar to Bari crossing itself: the Montenegrin operator at the Port of Bar, Barska Plovidba, confirmed back in April that there’s no 2026 season, and its own route page still shows no Bar-Bari dates at all - checked again on 17 October 2026. The workaround most guides now send you to, the Croatian boat from Dubrovnik to Bari, isn’t running either: Jadrolinija’s notice of 21 October 2026 cancels every sailing on its international routes, Dubrovnik-Bari included, until 5 January 2027, so nothing on it runs before then. That’s the position as of 23 October 2026 - check with Jadrolinija before you plan around it. If a comparison site quotes you a fare “from €78” for Bar-Bari, it’s quoting the 2025 price list, and the calendar comes back empty the moment you try to pick a date.

This page is the route itself: what the Bar-Bari line was, why it keeps falling over, and the numbers on the two crossings that replace it. For the wider picture of reaching the country by sea - car paperwork, arriving at the port, entry documents - see our ferry to Montenegro guide. What follows here is specific to this one pair of ports.

Why the line is not running

The reason is a ship, not demand. The executive director of Barska Plovidba, Boris Mihailović, told the Montenegrin press on 9 April 2026 that the summer Bar-Bari service wouldn’t operate because Jadrolinija has no vessel available for it.

The detail behind that’s worth understanding, because it explains why a 2027 return isn’t a safe assumption either. The plan had been for Jadrolinija’s Dalmacija to work Bar-Bari for six months of 2026. At a meeting in Rijeka the Croatian side told Barska Plovidba that the Marko Polo no longer meets the standards for international lines, so the Dalmacija has to absorb the Marko Polo’s own Italian routes, leaving nothing for Bar. The contract was never signed, and Mihailović said plainly that it wouldn’t be.

The same report noted that Bar lost its links to Durrës and Ancona for the year as well, both of which had been worked by Adria Ferries’ AF Mia. That’s the part most travel pages haven’t caught up with: this wasn’t one route dropping out, it was the Port of Bar’s scheduled passenger traffic thinning out across the board.

What the crossing was when it ran

It helps to know what you’re missing, and what to expect if it comes back.

Bar-Bari was a summer line, and a thin one. The operator’s published sailing plan for line L55 in 2025 gave it exactly one round trip a week between 1 July and 27 August: Bari on Tuesday at 11:00 into Bar at 19:00, Bar on Wednesday at 11:00 into Bari at 19:00. Eight hours, in daylight, once a week. It also ran as a partnership: a Croatian ship, a Montenegrin agent selling tickets at the Port of Bar. The boat booked for that season was Jadrolinija’s Dalmacija, and the neighbouring service, L54 Dubrovnik-Bari, ran the same corridor to the same Italian port.

The fare structure is worth a look, because it explains the number that still haunts this route. On the 2025 price list an adult cost €58.00, a car up to five metres €77.00 - and then a separate service tax of €20.00 per passenger and €24.00 per car on top. Add the two together and you get the “from €78” that comparison sites are still quoting as a 2026 fare.

Both lines also show up in a single document that tells you a lot about the corridor’s reliability: an operator notice cancelling L55 departures on 9, 15 and 16 July 2025 and every L54 Dubrovnik-Bari sailing up to 17 July 2025 because of a breakdown on the Bartol Kašić, with full refunds through the agency that sold the ticket. One breakdown in a thin fleet took out both international lines in the middle of high season - and, eighteen months later, it has happened again.

What you could take on board when it sailed: passengers on deck or in cabins, and vehicles, which was the real point of it. Cars, campervans and motorbikes crossed on these boats, which is why the line mattered far more to road-trippers than the passenger numbers suggest. Fly-in visitors have Podgorica, Tivat and nearby Dubrovnik; someone driving from Italy has only the sea.

We’re deliberately not printing 2025 or 2024 fares and timings as if they were current. They’re the numbers still circulating on booking aggregators, and repeating them is exactly how this route ended up with a decade of internet pages describing a ferry that’s not there.

The two ways across now, and what each costs

Durrës to Bari is the crossing nobody suggests, and in autumn 2026 it’s the only one of the two still sailing. Adria Ferries runs it close to daily all year round: from mid-September the boat leaves at 23:00 and docks at 08:00, with a 22:00 departure through the winter and spring and an extra daytime sailing in high summer. The drive down from Bar or Ulcinj is 2.5-3 hours on the Albanian coast road, so it suits anyone already in the south. One caution on the money: the fare table on the operator’s site is still headed “SEASON 2025”, so it shows you the shape of the price rather than the price. Put your own date through the booking system on adriaferries.com before you budget, and remember the port fees are charged separately from the fare.

Dubrovnik to Bari was the natural substitute until August 2026. Jadrolinija’s own notice board now says a technical issue on the ferry Dalmacija has stopped all of its international sailings, Dubrovnik-Bari included: the notice of 21 October 2026 cancels them until 5 January 2027, with compensation under EU Regulation 1177/2010 for anyone holding a ticket (the Croatian-language version says the same). The timing matters more than it looks: the operator’s own Route 54 timetable for 2026 ended with a last sailing window of 20-21 October, so the line lost the whole remainder of its 2026 season rather than a few weeks of it. As of 17 October 2026 Jadrolinija’s international lines page listed only line 53 Split-Ancona, with no Dubrovnik-Bari timetable on it, so ask the carrier about 2027 dates before you plan around this line. If you’re driving north anyway, the crossing at Karasovići is where the EU’s Entry/Exit System takes your fingerprints and a face scan on a first entry - Croatia started EES at all its international crossings on 12 October 2025 and has run it in full since 10 April 2026. The drive itself is covered in our Kotor to Dubrovnik guide.

Without a car, fly. Air Montenegro runs Podgorica-Rome directly in about 90 minutes, and on 23 September 2026 its own booking page sold a seat on the 2 October flight at €44.47 (~$51 / £38) one-way. That was less than the cheapest deck ticket on the Durrës boat before port fees, and the flight saves you three hours of driving and a night at sea - though it lands you in Rome, not Puglia. That flight has gone and fares move by date, so treat it as a ballpark and price your own day on the airline’s site. Other Italian cities have seasonal flights too, and the map changes every year, so check both Tivat and Podgorica for your dates.

Ancona to Bar isn’t running either - the evidence is in our ferry to Montenegro guide.

Taking a car: what changes without the ferry

If your plan was to put your own car on a boat in Bari and drive off it in Montenegro, you’ll need to rebuild it for now, and the options aren’t equivalent.

Shipping the car through Durrës is the sea option to plan on until the end of 2026 (Starlines also takes cars from Brindisi to Vlorë, further south in Albania), and it adds Albania to the trip - which some people will regard as a bonus and others as a detour. Check your insurance covers Albania as well as Montenegro before you drive south, because the policy gap turns up at the Albanian border, not at the ferry desk.

Shipping the car from Dubrovnik is off the table until the Jadrolinija boat comes back. Don’t drive north on the strength of an old blog post: there is nothing to put the car on.

Hiring instead of shipping is the choice most people land on once they price the vehicle fares - €104 in low season and €170 in high on Adria Ferries’ published table, plus the €20 vehicle fee, before you’ve bought a ticket for yourself. For a trip of under two weeks, two hire cars are usually cheaper. The catch is the cross-border clause: a Montenegrin hire car often needs advance notice and a Green Card to enter Croatia, and some contracts refuse it outright. Our guide to renting a car in Montenegro covers the deposits, the paperwork and which desks are relaxed about it.

If you are standing in Bar with a ticket problem

Two things help if you booked through a third party before the season was cancelled, or if you’re in town and the plan has fallen apart.

Refunds for cancelled sailings on these lines have historically been handled by the agency that sold you the ticket, not by the shipping company, which is what the operator’s own 2025 cancellation notice says. If you bought through an aggregator, chase the aggregator.

Bar isn’t a bad place to be stuck. It has the country’s main railway station with the line north to Podgorica and on to Belgrade, a bus station beside it, and the old town at Stari Bar in the hills behind. Our Bar guide covers what to do with a spare day, and getting around Montenegro has the onward connections.

For a coastal base rather than a port town, Budva is 40 minutes up the road and Kotor about an hour and a half.

For a 2027 season, trust only Jadrolinija and Barska Plovidba

Two sources decide whether this line sails again, and neither is a comparison site or a travel blog repeating last year’s numbers.

1. The operator’s own route page at barskaplovidba.me. If a season is confirmed, dates appear there. Checked again on 17 October 2026: the Bar-Bari page is still carrying an Ancona-Bar timetable from 2024 and the Bar-Ancona price list beside it - nothing for Bar-Bari in 2026, and nothing yet for 2027.
2. Jadrolinija itself, the Croatian carrier that would have to supply the ship. As of 17 October 2026 its international lines page was down to a single route, 53 Split-Ancona, and its notice of 21 October 2026 cancels that one too, along with every other international sailing, until 5 January 2027. Line 55, the Bar-Bari number, hasn’t appeared on it at all in 2026.

Two supporting checks, useful but not decisive on their own: the Montenegrin business press (Vijesti, Investitor and similar outlets reported the April 2026 contract collapse months before any timetable would have appeared), and a real booking form - pick a specific 2027 date and try to buy. If a site shows a price with no bookable date, the price is decoration, not a schedule.

The realistic outlook, based on what the operator actually said in April: the obstacle is a shortage of ships that meet international standards, not paperwork, so the line’s return depends on Jadrolinija freeing up a vessel it doesn’t currently have spare. Mihailović put it bluntly - a contract is “very likely” not to be active in 2027 either, because the Croatian side told his team it isn’t planning to buy a ship any time soon. As of this check neither company has announced a 2027 season. Plan a 2026 or 2027 trip as if the direct crossing doesn’t exist; if it comes back, that’s a bonus, and this page is worth a second look closer to your travel date.

Nearby and read also

• Ferry to Montenegro - the full picture of reaching the country by sea.
• Kotor to Dubrovnik - the drive north, and the border rules that come with it.
• Bar travel guide - the port town, Stari Bar and the old olive tree.
• Renting a car in Montenegro - hiring instead of shipping, and the cross-border rules.
• Getting around Montenegro - trains, buses and the coastal corridor from Bar.
• How to get to Montenegro - every arrival option side by side, air, land and sea.
• Montenegro coastal road trip - where Bar fits into a drive down the coast.
• Ulcinj - the town closest to the Albanian border if you sail into Durrës.