Bar to Bari Ferry: Not Sailing in 2026, and What Works

There is no Bar to Bari ferry in the 2026 season. The Montenegrin operator at the Port of Bar, Barska Plovidba, said so in April, and its own route page for the line still shows no 2026 dates at all - checked again on 2 August 2026. If a comparison site is quoting you a fare “from €78” for this crossing, it’s quoting last season, and the calendar will come back empty when 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 three ways people actually cross between Puglia and Montenegro now. For the wider picture of reaching the country by sea, including the Italian ports and what a car costs on a boat, see our ferry to Montenegro guide. What follows 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 “next year” 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 always a summer line, a few sailings a week rather than a daily service, and always run as a partnership: a Croatian ship, a Montenegrin agent selling tickets at the Port of Bar. In the 2025 season it carried the line number L55 in the operator’s own notices, and the ship on it was Jadrolinija’s Bartol Kašić. The neighbouring service, L54 Dubrovnik-Bari, ran the same corridor to the same Italian port.

Both of those show up in a single document that tells you a lot about the route’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 ageing ship covering two international lines in the middle of high season is the whole story of this corridor in miniature.

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 three airports; 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 three ways to cross now

Bari to Dubrovnik is the substitute most people miss, because they search for a Montenegrin port and never think to look at the Croatian one. Jadrolinija’s 2026 line runs mostly by day, about eight hours, docking in the evening, with the season stretching from April to October rather than just summer. The drive on from Dubrovnik to Kotor is straightforward and covered in our Kotor to Dubrovnik guide - about 40 km of that’s just getting from Dubrovnik down to the Montenegrin border - but budget properly for the crossing at Karasovići - since April 2026 it runs the EU’s Entry/Exit System, and a first registration takes fingerprints and a face scan.

Bari to Durrës is the option nobody suggests and the one that works best if you’re heading for Ulcinj, Bar or Lake Skadar. Adria Ferries lists Bari-Durrës as a current line on its own site, it runs year-round rather than for eight weeks of summer, and from Durrës the drive north up the Albanian coast to the Montenegrin border is shorter than most people assume.

Ancona to Bar deserves a warning rather than a recommendation. Adria Ferries’ current line list on its own homepage shows Ancona-Durrës, Bari-Durrës and Trieste-Durrës, and the Ancona-Bar timetable still on its site is headed season 2025, with 2025 dates. Combined with the April report that Bar lost the Ancona link too, that means you should treat Ancona-Bar as unconfirmed for 2026 and ask the operator directly before you build a trip on it, rather than trusting a page or a comparison site.

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 this year, and the options aren’t equivalent.

Shipping the car to Dubrovnik keeps you closest to the original idea. You drive off in Croatia and cross into Montenegro by road the next morning. Add a night’s sleep and a border queue that in July and August can run past an hour.

Shipping the car to Durrës 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 sail.

Hiring instead of shipping is the choice most people land on once they price the vehicle fares, and it’s usually cheaper for a trip of under two weeks. 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

A few things that are worth knowing 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.

How to check whether the line comes back

Three sources, in order of usefulness, and none of them is a comparison site.

1. The operator’s own route page at barskaplovidba.me. If a season is happening, dates appear there. Right now the newest timetable published on that page is an Ancona-Bar list from 2024, which tells you how long the page has been dormant.
2. The Montenegrin business press - outlets like Vijesti and Investitor report contract news months before any timetable is published, and it’s where the April 2026 confirmation appeared.
3. A real booking form. Pick a specific date in the season and try to buy. If a site shows a price but no bookable date, the price is decoration.

The realistic outlook, based on what the operator has actually said: the obstacle is a shortage of ships that meet international standards, not paperwork, so the line returning depends on Jadrolinija freeing up a vessel. Mihailović suggested it’s questionable for next year too. Plan 2026 and 2027 trips as if the crossing doesn’t exist, and treat its return as a bonus.

Nearby and read also

• Ferry to Montenegro - the full picture of reaching the country by sea.
• Kotor to Dubrovnik - the road link that makes the Bari-Dubrovnik boat work.
• 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.
• Ulcinj - the town closest to the Albanian border if you sail into Durrës.