An earthquake of magnitude 4.1 on the Richter scale shook northwestern Serbia in the night of 5 May 2026. The epicentre - the Bezdan area, near Sombor. The time - 2:35 in the morning. The regional effect - the tremor was felt in Croatia and Hungary as well.

According to the Republic Seismological Institute of Serbia, a second, weaker aftershock was also recorded during the night. No casualties or damage to buildings were officially reported. For an earthquake of magnitude 4.1, that's a standard picture - you feel it, it surprises you, sometimes it cracks a window, but it rarely causes serious damage.

Geologically, this part of Vojvodina and the Pannonian basin rarely produce strong earthquakes. The fact that such a nighttime tremor was felt as far as Zagreb and Budapest says something about how seismic waves travel across flat terrain - low resistance, long distance. The same phenomenon happens in Macedonia and Bulgaria with earthquakes in northern Greece.

The Balkans remember 1963 in Skopje pretty well. After that, an entire generation of architects and engineers built seismic safety into the construction standards. The question the Balkans rarely ask out loud now - how many of our buildings put up in the 90s and 2000s honour those standards? And when one day a 5.5 or 6.0 arrives instead of a 4.1 - who exactly is going to answer for it?